Cats and Buttered Toast
 

As you digest your turkey, lolling back in your chair, desktop monitor strangely distant because of this unfamiliar seating position, or else hunched forward, trying to stop that nervous trembling in your legs as you perch your laptop on the place it is named after while you squint at its screen which seems to be full of vibrating letters, maybe, just maybe the following topic will cause your erstwhile slumbering brain cells to awaken with interest and enthusiasm.

A subject we have discussed at some length in days gone by, when Margaret Thatcher reined supreme. Maybe it has touched Cellarites past, I would not know, but still the question irritates:

If you strap a slice of toast, butter side up, to the back of a cat, and then drop that selfsame harnessed cat from the first floor bedroom window, does the cat land on its feet, or the toast land butter side down. Be not hasty with your decision or theoretical equation. There are the very foundations of quantum physics to be shaken here and possibly the solution for powerless flight to be discovered.....

Be sure to have the Rennies close at hand.....

Cat lands feet first in the hedge, loses footing and thuds onto the ground on the toast.

Cats need enough room to flip over.

Sorry, Wolf, I did warn you not to be too hasty with your reply.

You have overlooked the opposing force of the toast which will be insisting on landing butter-side down...

While your answer may apply in some instances (or will it?) - perhaps one could argue that if the slice was too small to counter the cat's insistance on landing on its feet, then the cat would, shall we say, win, but what if the slice was a large one? Or does relevant/respective size matter to such an extent....?

Ah--they did the 'butter-side down' experiment on MythBusters! The made toast, buttered it, and made a machine to drop it to the floor without bias. In their experiment, the toast actually landed butter side UP a few more times than down! I know, I couldn't believe it, either!

*can't wait to eat! Must wait until 4 o'clock! Starving!*

I heard about that too, but the problem there was that the conditions weren't being correctly reproduced. Relying on a machine to replace the human element which is so important to this conundrum quite clearly affected the results. Also the 'toast-alone' conditions are insufficient to replicate the alternative that is described, involving a feline. Let alone the possibility (which seems quite likley given the outcome) that the toast was buttered too soon allowing the butter to seep far into the toast so as to disturb the delicate balance between the two sides.

This is not a question that is really suited to practical resolution in any event, there being a live creature involved - I believe you have an organisation or body known as PETA that could be counted on to sabotage any such experimental activity. Rather, this is for careful consideration and debate where ventured outcomes are proposed and supported by logical argument, only to be countered and tested by those who cannot be swayed to accept, and think otherwise.

I would suggest that both cat and toast would disappear in a flash of quantum probabilities.

I see where you are coming from Elspode, and I think there is some merit in your deduction. However, I am more inclined to follow the ponderings of some who propose that, in fact, the cat doesn't actually reach the ground. Provided that the correct balance between cat size, toast size and butter content is achieved the cat will hover, rotating in a clockwise direction in the northern hemisphere (counter-clockwise, naturally, in the southern hemisphere) as the opposing forces counter-balance each other, and thereby also gravity.

It may precipitate a stochastic ooze.

Heaven forbid that it does, that could take days to clear up. What makes you think that this could happen anyway, given that these are such rare occurences these days....?

I took that into consideration in my equations.

Well considering the wait period for a stochastic ooze is theoretically longer than the universe has been in existance it's hard to judge when one might naturally occur, but since the quantum forces involved are supposed to result in something resembling teleportation it would make it logical that actually seeing it occur is impossible using current methods.

If "ya'll" stopped by and helped me clean the damn kitchen, you wouldn't give a damn about the toast or cat.

I'm going with the cat landing on it's feet. Now if the toast had peanut butter on it instead of butter, I might have to reconsider.

No, sorry , can't agree about the teleportation link - not with live animals and all. For teleportation you need something like an Everyman Portable Demogriphicating Alien Transportation Device although these can be quite tricky to set up, especially in the co-ordinates department.

And the likelihood of the combination of cat and toast therefore starting one of these events - given their extreme infrequency - becomes all the more difficult to accept (let alone prove). A shade more head-scratching needed, I think....

I do agree with you, but we must not overlook the fact that the introduction of peanut butter changes the whole dynamics of the event which will obviously effect the supporting equation - over to Wolf to explain I think, she seems to have a good grasp of the mathematics here, although I do have reservations regarding the 9th and 10th stages of her earlier calculations....