Abstract
In 1988 a machine which defied the laws of gravity was proposed. The
idea takes advantage of the two well-known maxims: if
you drop buttered bread, it always lands butter-side down, and falling
cats always land on their feet. Thus it was proposed that
maybe we can strap buttered bread to the back of a cat and drop it,
and have it hover indefinitely due to both sides trying to
land face-downwards. The purpose of this talk is to show both theoretically
and experimentally that cats indeed do land on
their feet and buttered bread does generally land butter-side down,
due to the simple rotational dynamics involved. Besides the
cat trying to lick the butter off of its back, there are some obvious
problems with the idea of joining the two together to create
the so-called anti-gravity machine.