Schrodinger's Cat.

I found this in my Livejournal and it made me laugh, so I thought I'd share:

If buttered toast always lands buttered-side down and a cat always lands on its feet, then what happens if you strap a piece of toast buttered-side up to the back of a cat and drop it?

My immediate response was that the cat will land on its feet and then the ceiling will cave in so that the toast has also landed buttered-side down.


Upon further research of the subject, I've found a rather profound answer to this conundrum.

Let us assume that the question is in fact asking what would happen if you tied buttered bread on top of a cat, then dropped the cat from a fair height. There are two possible effects here, and they both require no negation of any particular principles.

It could land either way, and the reason why is very simple: if it lands butter side down, then the cat hasn't landed. It's laying on bread (and in a moment or two, it would wriggle upright, thus making its first contact with the floor a perfectly standard feet-first). Likewise, if it lands feet down, the bread has not landed, so it isn't violating the butter principle.

However, there's something the question doesn't specify which is absolutely vital to the equation and also the key to anti-gravity. We have all been assuming that this bread is tied on butter side up because it would be gross to get the butter on the cat. If it was butter side down, thereby buttering the cat, then the question has a simple answer. The cat lands feet first because the bread cannot land butter side up which would be the case were the cat buttered.

What if you were to tie the cat's feet together and then tie bread to the cat's tethered feet, buttered side facing them? It can't land bread side down, because the butter is on the other side, facing the cat feet. And since the cat feet have been covered by the butter and the animal doesn't land on it's back, we can assume that the cat toast cannot land cat side down. Thus, the conclusion we must draw is that the two forces will levitate, causing the buttered cat toast to levitate.



I may or may not have too much time on my hands.

Dogs are better than cats, and bagels are better than toast.

Couldn't resist. And I thought that gravity wasn't just optional ... it's the law!