Back in the 1960s, space scientists needed to know if it is true that a cat always lands on its feet:
NASA contributed funding to the paper “A Dynamical Explanation of the Falling Cat Phenomenon,” published in the International Journal of Solids and Structures, by Stanford’s T.R. Kane and M.P. Scher.
What was so significant about the paper was that it demonstrated that cats are physically capable of rotating their body in mid-air to right themselves when falling. A cat employs specific motor functions in order to achieve this self-righting mechanism, and the paper analyzed these functions as equations that could then be applied to humans.
While this function isn’t very useful to humans on earth, it’s critically important in space, as astronauts seeks to right their bodies traveling through zero gravity. Wolfgang Wild, “How flying cats got us to the moon. Really.” at Considerable
Apparently, this story is true, despite the fact that three cats are sitting here making me (O’Leary for News) write it:
Kane and Scher neither lifted nor dropped a single cat. Instead, they created a mathematical abstraction of a cat: two imaginary cylinder-like chunks, joined at a single point so the parts could (as with a feline spine) bend, but not twist. When they used a computer to plot the theoretical bendings of this theoretical falling chunky-cat, the motions resembled what they saw in old photographs of an actual falling cat. They conclude that their theory “explains the phenomenon under consideration”.
In 1993, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, applied some heavier-duty mathematics and physics tools to the same question. Richard Montgomery’s study, called Gauge Theory of the Falling Cat, leaps and bends across 26 pages of a mathematics journal. Then it mutters that “the original solutions of Kane and Scher [are] both the optimal and the simplest solutions”. Marc Abrahams, “Cat physics – and we are not making this up” at The Guardian
Here’s the paper.
Hat tip: Blazing Cat Fur
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10 November 2018
I (O’Leary for News 😉 ) was also ordered by the three cats to link to this story:
Researchers: We tend to overestimate dog intelligence
and this one
Extinction: Cats face rap for killing off dogs (Untrue, I am told, but dogs should be careful anyway … )
Cats do twist. Head end twists first to point downward, followed by tail end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU
I thought the “dropped cat landing on its feet” phenomenon was demonstrated long ago. I seem to recall reading about it in Scientific American many decades past. The tests were done with stroboscopic imaging to see how the cats twisted in mid air. And yes, actual felines were actually dropped upside down, although none were hurt as they all landed on their feet. Much easier and more realistic than making a mathematical model!
Thanks Denys,
I’ve been looking for some research like this. I have almost completed writing a novel which has short scene where NASA scientists have been able to adapt kittens to weightlessness
In part one of my novel a magazine/ezine reporter named Wendy is one of a dozen journalist’s who has been invited up to a large (max. occupancy 100+) space hotel and resort, which is scheduled to open in a couple of months as part of the projects publicity campaign. She has been tasked by her boss to get an exclusive interview with one of the key entrepreneurs involved in the space tourism project. That’s something she finds out is easier said than done. Here is the “space kitten” scene:
My hypothesis, which someday someone may actually be able to actually test, is that young kittens would be able to adapt to weightlessness and adult cats couldn’t. It appears from the NASA video that there might be some truth to the second part of the hypothesis. Though the cats don’t actually appear to be freaking out as much as just becoming very confused and disoriented. As we humans know that in zero g there is no up or down. So which way does a cat turn to land on its feet?
It’s nto clear why cats wanted humans to begin to explore space, but then, their motives have always been somewhat inscrutable.
Do humans exist just to further the genes of cats?
Mung
Finally, we now know the ultimate purpose and meaning of human life. The discussion on those other threads can stop now. 🙂