The laws of Murphy

[tlitody]

So I was looking at the image posted in the Cats W/NW

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1587954&postcount=174

and it occurs to me that there are some contradictary laws stated by Murphy.

The first one says that if you drop a cat it always lands on its feet.
The second one says that if you drop a piece of buttered toast it always lands butter side down.

So what happens if you tie a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat and toss it out the window. Which way up does it land and most importantly why?

 

[PatrickT]

My mind....is blown...

Good question.

 

[SciAggie]

The cat has more mass so it lands on it's feet, but Murphy says the toast will come off and you will accidentally step in it barefooted. I want pics of the guy that managed to tie a slice of buttered toast to a cat.

 

[sig]

Interesting that Murphy's law is used wrongly.....

 

[Keith]

Aparently a cat has a better chance of surviving from twenty three floors up than it does from seven. After falling about seven stories it thinks "WTF ... this is fun!" and relaxes.

😀

 

[mfunnell]

Of all the laws associated with Murphy's Law, I've always appreciated Cole's Law: start with some thinly sliced cabbage...

...Mike

 

[Steinberg2010]

Presumably that depends which way up you tie the buttered toast as well, no?

~S

 

[acheyj]

The depth and profundity of this band of brothers leaves me in awe !. Old as I am still can learn, if fact its not long ago I learnt how to make a cat go meow.

ron VK5AKJ (acheyj) in state of ......

 

[taskoni]

I didn't tested my cat or butter, but what hat I know is how the r7 with 80mm lux lands on a 3000$ glass table - pretty bad for the table and my wallet...
b.

P.S.
Off to test the cat 😀

 

[Sparrow]

if it were Schrödinger's cat then, obviously, it would land both on it's feet and on it's back at the same time .... well, as long as no one's looking that is, well, unless whoever is looking is in a box so that no one can see if he's looking or not .... well, ...

 

[pagpow]

SciAggie and Steinberg2010 are onto something here, and Keith might be, too.
One can develop a rightness function, UpRightness or UR for short, whose value depends on the mass of the toast relative to the mass of the cat (increasingly important as the mass of the toast approaches and or exceeds the mass of the cat, but negligible until the mass of the toast equals 1/2 the mass of the cat), a binary variable for butter side to the fur or butter side away from the fur), and the height of the fall.

On reflection, however, I think three other factors need to be included:
1) the starting position of the cat (feet up or feet down), 2) the initial rotation imparted to the cat, and perhaps most important since this is a cat, the Schroedinger's cat factor allowing for the possibility that the cat will land both feet up and feet down.

Ultimately, this theoretic formulation does not specify the coefficients of these variables. This must be done by dropping a cat approximately 100 times with all but one variable the same and the remaining variable changed using a Monte Carlo technique (tho some would argue the need to use a Monte Python technique), and then running this iteratively with similar changes in the other variables.
Finally, the same routine must be applied to different cats to test for robustness of results across breeds of cats as well as individual cats.

The principles of this have been very well fleshed out (no pun intended) in a seminal article first appearing in the Journal of Irreproducible Results (online at jir.com).
I'm sorry I remember neither the title nor the date of publication and wish to apologize for the gravity of that omission.

Giorgio

 

[Sparrow]

that may well be true, but there must be a point where the cat and the buttered toast are in balance, so Fbut+Fcat=0

 

[jesse1dog]

I think the above writers have completely ignored the 'IoM' postulate concerning the Manx cat, in addition to the appropriate or otherwise fixing and fixture of the toast, buttered or not, to the cat. Although the cat provides a series of known and unknown variables that we can appreciate or not as the situation demands, what has not been taken into sufficient consideration is the nature of the toast itself - if it is wholemeal, brown, multigrain, white, or non of these. And surely the amount , quality and origin of the butter can only add to the simplicity of the question originally posed.

A quick evaluation and test of the original hypothesis resulted in the following.
Toast was prepared and buttered - 25g wholmeal with 7g Welsh Dragon butter. Farm cat was seen in the garden. Alfie, my Birkenhead Terrier was sent to fetch the cat. Toast was knocked out of my hand and landed on Joe, my old Jack Russell dog which promptly ate it before it landed on the floor. The cat disappeared and Alfie went through the hedge into next doors garden where he surprised Roy who washing his car upset his water bucket, and promtly swore and turned the surrounding air blue. Neither dog nor cat can be seen and I am typing this under the table in an attempt to avoid an angry neighbour.
A more controlled environment is clearly indicated.

jesse

 

[pagpow]

I appreciate Stewart's introduction of the transitory equilibrium state and and Jesse's explication of the Rube Goldberg-ian perspective on the topic.

I also note that Jesse/John is uniquely qualified to contribute to this thread on toast as his signature references "slice."

Giorgio

 

[Sparrow]

I appreciate Stewart's introduction of the transitory equilibrium state and and Jesse's explication of the Rube Goldberg-ian perspective on the topic.

I also note that Jesse/John is uniquely qualified to contribute to this thread on toast as his signature references "slice."

Giorgio

I was, in fact, postulating an antigravity cat as opposed to a simple transitory equilibrium ... by the way, if the cat's called Marmalade one needs to introduce the conserve variable.

 

[pagpow]

Stewart, I appreciate your clarification and will preserve your point related to the feline nomenclature.

 

[unixrevolution]

So I was looking at the image posted in the Cats W/NW

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1587954&postcount=174

and it occurs to me that there are some contradictary laws stated by Murphy.

The first one says that if you drop a cat it always lands on its feet.
The second one says that if you drop a piece of buttered toast it always lands butter side down.

So what happens if you tie a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat and toss it out the window. Which way up does it land and most importantly why?

Obviously, the inability for nature to resolve the paradox will result in neither the cat nor the toast hitting the ground, generating low-altitude antigravity.

 

[JohnnyT]

Only the buttered toast will survive to tells his story to the future generation.

 

[freeranger]

As usual, the Japanese have been using this technology for years:


MOG-LEV TRAIN

 

[tlitody]

As usual, the Japanese have been using this technology for years:

View attachment 85566
MOG-LEV TRAIN

great minds think alike.