Conumdrums

[Lindy]

Since a cat will always land on it's feet, and a dropped piece of toast will always land jelly side down, then a cat glued to a piece of toast
should hover in quantum indecision.

What are your improbable ponderings?

If quantum kitties don't grab your fancy try this one.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4669114/

[mars_hall]

It depends on if the toast is pasted on the cat's back or it's feet

[Lindy]

I was thinking jelly side to feet

[mars_hall]

Then it would be a battle... cat's feet, or jelly down.....

[Prometheus]

some us governmental organization did a study (and im not making this stuff up) and found that 60% of the time the toast lands butter side down, and a cat lands on its feet 90 some % of the time. Therefore, i dont think they would hover, but maybe just be in a slowed decent, or land sideways.

[Lindy]

Properly tuned you should be able to make a cat/toast rail gun.

[Ug]

I had wondered what was keeping you lot occupied.

[Jman]

Someone in my physics class had this idea that you could make in intergalatic rail gun out of the earth. All you would have to do would be to drill a hole through the earth and deposit all that rock on the other end, so the gravity would be uneven. Therefore if you dropped something into the hole it would accelerate, and would come out the other side at a terrific speed.

I'm not making this up. I suppose you would have to know him to understand.

The more conventional theory is that if you drill a whole through the earth, something dropped in will accelerate until it reached the core, then it would slow down until it came out the other end, when it would reverse and go the other way. I call it the Great Harmonic Oscillator.


On a related cat experiment, is Schrödinger's cat alive or dead?

[mars_hall]

Originally posted by Jman
On a related cat experiment, is Schrödinger's cat alive or dead?

As long as this one has been debated, I believe the cat is dead by now.

[Jman]

You never know, cats have nine lives.

[Prometheus]

maybe its reincarnated now and on its second set of 9 lives, lol

[mark]

>Properly tuned you should be able to make a cat/toast rail gun.

I love it. Is the "rail gun" in this context a mass driver (a la Robert Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") or something like the WWII German "Big Bertha"?

[Jman]

This kind of rail gun would be a mass driver. I believe the Big Bertha you're thinking about was a huge gun on rails.

The novel thing about these proposed rail guns in their driving system: opposing orientations or gravity.

Wait, how's this cat/toast interface supposed to be propelled? They oppose each other: no force.

[mark]

Actually, the mass driver (as proposed by Heinlein) is essentially a linear accelerator. An object that contains any substance that can be "grabbed" by a (very!) powerful electromagnetic field could be launched.

Hmmm - this cat...any body piercings?

[Prometheus]

Schroders cat was the idea that if you put a cat in a box with a radioactive substance and as soon as an electron from the substance hit a plate, it woudl release a gas that would kill the cat. THe theory is, that the cat is simultaneously alive and dead because the experimetor does not know if the cat is dead or alive. Therefore, the experimentor could think the cat is alive when it is really dead, or vice versa. Because of this, the cat is both alive and dead. Interestering theory.

Another one is the idea that there is an infinate number of universes because we all actually live in our own universe, with others just being in it. Another good one, is that for every possible outcome of an event, another universe is created in which that outcome occurs. THerefore, when you flip a coin, on univers is created where it lands heads, and another where it is tails. There is an infinity of infinites of universes. Theoretical physics is cool, another one of my hobbies. Just though i woudl stick all that in there.

Wasn't one of the German's V projects a gigantic linear accelerator? I think it was the V3, carved into the French Mountain side with like a mile long pipe that every 18 in or so there was a charge that would go off and accelerate a half ton chunck of metal towards london. If i remember right, it was a primitive form of linear accelerator, but on a much larger scale.