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Tuesday September 14, 1999 Previous | Next
Dear Yahoo!:
Why does buttered bread always land butter-side down? And why do cats always land on their feet? What would happen if you buttered the back of a cat and dropped it out of a window?
Gilly
Chesire, Connecticut
Dear Gilly:
Funny you should ask. This question seems to be making the rounds. We found the answer by doing a slightly advanced search, typing "+toast +cat" into Alta Vista's search engine. On one web page we learned that this query is the basis for a grand prize-winning solution to the elusive puzzle of perpetual motion.

The project description speaks for itself:

"When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped it always lands buttered side down. It was proposed to strap giant slabs of hot buttered toast to the back of a hundred tethered cats; the two opposing forces will cause the cats to hover, spinning inches above the ground. Using the giant buttered toast/cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago."

Meow.

 
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