wil it? wont it?

[james.T.kirk]

everybody knows that when toast is dropped it lands buttered side down and that when a cat is dropped it always lands on its feet,but what would happen if you strapped a slice of buttered toast to a cats back and dropped it? would they hover??

[bernardo]

They wouldn't just hover. The toast has a tendency to flip over to make sure that it lands face-down, and a cat has a tendency to flip over to land feet-down. So the combination will start spinning in mid-air. In poor countries this device is often used as a perpetual-motion machine to generate electricity for domestic use.

[SteveD]

There are some serious studies into the phenomenon here: http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/19990914.html http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rajm/toast.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/A945335

[jenstar]

bernardo is quite correct, but fails to point out that RSPCA takes a very dim view of this practice and you are liable to expose yourself to serious animal cuelty charges if you attempt it in this country.

[Ray the DJ]

what would happen if you buttered the cat?

[bernardo]

If you buttered the cat with an average thickness of butter of between 0.34 and 0.47 millimetres and dropped it from a height of between 2.13 and 3.66 metres, your next-door-neighbour's seven-year-old daughter's pet armadillo would explode. But if the height is more than 3.66 metres, there would be a Maoist revolution in Northumberland. If the average thickness of butter on the cat is outside the limits given, nothing would happen apart from you watching the cat to see if anything would happen.