PERPETUAL MOTION THEORY
An American magazine held a competition,
inviting its readers to submit new scientific theories on ANY subject.
Below is the winner:
Subject: Perpetual Motion
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it
always lands buttered side down. Therefore, if a slice of toast is strapped
to a cat's back, buttered side up, and the animal is then dropped, the two opposing
forces will cause it to hover, spinning inches above the ground. If enough toast-laden
felines were used, they could form the basis of a high-speed monorail system.
...And then this mail got this reply from one of the recipients:
I've been thinking about this cat/toast business for a while. In the buttered toast case,
it's the butter that causes it to land buttered side down - it doesn't have
to be toast, the theory works equally well with Jacob's crackers. So to save
money you just miss out the toast and butter the cats. Also, should there
be an imbalance between the effects of cat and butter, there are other substances
that have a stronger affinity for carpet.
Probability of carpet impact is determined by the following simple formula:
p = s * t(t)/tC
Where p
is the probability of carpet impact, s is
the "stain" value of the toast-covering substance - an indicator of
the effectiveness of the toast topping in permanently staining the carpet. Chicken
Tikka Masala, for example, has a very high s value,
while the s value of water is zero.
TC and t(t) indicate
the tone of the carpet and topping - the value of p
being strongly related to the relationship between the colour of the carpet
and topping, as even chicken tikka masala won't cause a permanent and obvious
stain if the carpet is the same colour. So it is obvious that the probability
of carpet impact is maximised if you use chicken tikka masala and a white carpet - in fact this
combination gives a p value of one,
which is the same as the probability of a cat landing on its feet. Therefore
a cat with chicken tikka masala on its back will be certain to hover in mid air,
while there could be problems with buttered toast as the toast may fall
off the cat, causing a terrible monorail crash resulting in nauseating images
of members of the royal family visiting accident victims in hospital, and politicians
saying it wouldn't have happened if their party was in power as there would
have been more investment in cat-toast glue research. Therefore it is in the
interests not only of public safety but also public sanity if the buttered toast
on cats idea is scrapped, to be replaced by a monorail powered by cats smeared
with chicken tikka masala floating above a rail made from white shag pile carpet.