OT: perpetual motion ................

[Guest guest]

This cracked me up …

.......... Perpetual Motion, an American magazine, held a competition

inviting its readers to submit new scientific theories on ANY subject.

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

'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 with

carpet.

Probability of carpet impact is determined by the following simple formula:

p = s * t(t)/t©

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 and permanently staining the carpet. Chicken Tikka Masala, for

example, has a very high s value, while the s value of water is zero. t©

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

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