Why Cats Land On Their Feet

Download or read book Why Cats Land on Their Feet written by Mark Levi and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-27 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to use physical reasoning to solve surprising paradoxes Ever wonder why cats land on their feet? Or what holds a spinning top upright? Or whether it is possible to feel the Earth's rotation in an airplane? Why Cats Land on Their Feet is a compendium of paradoxes and puzzles that readers can solve using their own physical intuition. And the surprising answers to virtually all of these astonishing paradoxes can be arrived at with no formal knowledge of physics. Mark Levi introduces each physical problem, sometimes gives a hint or two, and then fully explains the solution. Here readers can test their critical-thinking skills against a whole assortment of puzzles and paradoxes involving floating and diving, sailing and gliding, gymnastics, bike riding, outer space, throwing a ball from a moving car, centrifugal force, gyroscopic motion, and, of course, falling cats. Want to figure out how to open a wine bottle with a book? Or how to compute the square root of a number using a tennis shoe and a watch? Why Cats Land on Their Feet shows you how, and all that's required is a familiarity with basic high-school mathematics. This lively collection also features an appendix that explains all physical concepts used in the book, from Newton's laws to the fundamental theorem of calculus.

Download or read book Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics written by Gregory J. Gbur and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do cats land on their feet? Discover how this question stumped brilliant minds and how its answer helped solve other seemingly impossible puzzles The question of how falling cats land on their feet has long intrigued humans. In this playful and eye-opening history, physicist and cat parent Gregory Gbur explores how attempts to understand the cat-righting reflex have provided crucial insights into puzzles in mathematics, geophysics, neuroscience, and human space exploration. The result is an engaging tumble through physics, physiology, photography, and robotics to uncover, through scientific debate, the secret of the acrobatic performance known as cat-turning, the cat flip, and the cat twist. Readers learn the solution but also discover that the finer details still inspire heated arguments. As with other cat behavior, the more we investigate, the more surprises we discover.

Download or read book How to Land on Your Feet written by Jamie Shelman and published by The Experiment + ORM. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why spend one life worrying . . . when you could spend nine lives napping? Take it from artist Jamie Shelman's wry and furry felines: Cats work reasonable hours (zero), love wisely (from a distance), and live boldly (until someone starts vacuuming). Don't go without these 100 sage lessons: ·Be especially attentive to the one person who doesn’t like you. ·Get away with murder by looking cute. ·Ignore anyone who doesn't worship you. ·Be pleased with your achievements, however small. ·The best solution to a problem is a nap.Live better—live like your cat!

Download or read book Geometry, Mechanics, and Control in Action for the Falling Cat written by Toshihiro Iwai and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-23 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The falling cat is an interesting theme to pursue, in which geometry, mechanics, and control are in action together. As is well known, cats can almost always land on their feet when tossed into the air in an upside-down attitude. If cats are not given a non-vanishing angular momentum at an initial instant, they cannot rotate during their motion, and the motion they can make in the air is vibration only. However, cats accomplish a half turn without rotation when landing on their feet. In order to solve this apparent mystery, one needs to thoroughly understand rotations and vibrations. The connection theory in differential geometry can provide rigorous definitions of rotation and vibration for many-body systems. Deformable bodies of cats are not easy to treat mechanically. A feasible way to approach the question of the falling cat is to start with many-body systems and then proceed to rigid bodies and, further, to jointed rigid bodies, which can approximate the body of a cat. In this book, the connection theory is applied first to a many-body system to show that vibrational motions of the many-body system can result in rotations without performing rotational motions and then to the cat model consisting of jointed rigid bodies. On the basis of this geometric setting, mechanics of many-body systems and of jointed rigid bodies must be set up. In order to take into account the fact that cats can deform their bodies, three torque inputs which may give a twist to the cat model are applied as control inputs under the condition of the vanishing angular momentum. Then, a control is designed according to the port-controlled Hamiltonian method for the model cat to perform a half turn and to halt the motion upon landing. The book also gives a brief review of control systems through simple examples to explain the role of control inputs.

Download or read book Rotation, Reflection, and Frame Changes written by Rebecca M. Brannon and published by IOP Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rotation, Reflection, and Frame Changes is an engineer's practical resource for rotation-related theorems that might otherwise be difficult to find in the literature. By providing extensive tutorials in requisite mathematics, intuitive insight, and computer source code, this work stands as a definitive contribution to engineering mechanics.

Download or read book Wild Cats of the World written by Mel Sunquist and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did you know that European royalty once used cheetahs to hunt deer, or that caracals can capture birds by leaping six and a half feet straight up into the air from a standing start? Have you ever wondered whether domestic cats really do land on their feet when they fall, or how Canada lynx can stalk their prey in the winter without falling through the deep snow? Wild Cats of the World is a treasure trove of answers to questions like these, and many others, for anyone who's interested in learning more about the world's felids, including the ones with whom we share our homes. Mel and Fiona Sunquist have spent more than a decade gathering information about cats from every available source, many of them quite difficult to find, including scientific papers, descriptions of hunts, archeological findings, observations by naturalists and travelers, reports from government agencies, and newsletters from a wide variety of organizations. Weaving information from these sources together with their own experiences observing wild cats around the world, the Sunquists have created the most comprehensive reference on felids available. Each of their accounts of the 36 species of cat contains a description of the cat, including human interactions with it, as well as detailed data on its distribution, ecology and behavior, status in the wild, and efforts to conserve it. Numerous photographs, including more than 40 in full color, illustrate these accounts. Ranging from the two-pound black-footed cat to the five-hundred-pound tiger, and from the African serval with its satellite-dish ears to the web-footed fishing cat of Asia, Wild Cats of the World will fascinate and educate felid fans of any stripe (or spot).

Download or read book Why Do Cats Always Land on Their Feet? written by Marty Becker, D.V.M. and published by Health Communications, Inc.. This book was released on 2006-09-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses a question-and-answer format to present a variety of information about cats.