[SOC] Anguishing questions ?

[Bob Patten]

--- f5pbl@qsl.net wrote:
>  
> Q4
> As a cat always falls on his legs and a buttered toast
> always falls on the 
> butter side, what if you fasten a buttered toast on the
> back of a cat and throw 
> him (or her) by the window ? 
>  
A British science 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
 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."


=====
73,     Bob Patten, N4BP       Plantation, FL

E-Mail: n4bp@yahoo.com	       Website: http://www.qsl.net/n4bp
QRP ARCI #3412   FISTS #7871   ARS #799   SOC #1   Whiners #6

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