Volatile cats

Perhaps it is not surprising that the first scholars interested in the amazing ability of cats falling from any height to land on their feet. believed that the official history of scientific research in the physics of falling kittens began in 1969, when two physicists at Stanford University published a study entitled "Dynamic explanation of the phenomenon of falling cats».

At the same physics, unlike many of his followers, in the course of their work is not dropped a single cat. Instead, they created a mathematical abstraction, model cat that pretty well describes the process and the results of the fall of live cats, which once threw someone else. Until now, the article Kane and Cher remains almost the only publication in the Journal of cats International Journal of Solids and Structures.

Not all physicists believe that cats need to throw from a height - some interest and characteristic manner of animals sneak gently lying in wait for prey. Christine Bishop of the University of California, Davis (USA) and her colleagues for their research prowling cats partially shaved three of them and painted with special paint, which helped monitor the work of muscles and movement of the animal.

Falling on a fertile subject of cats and marked the famous magazine Annals of Improbable Research, presented annually to the Ig Nobel prize the most ridiculous and strange research. The author Room 1998, Fiorella Gambale, threw a cat by the name of Esther with different height, a total of 600 times. Thus, it was found that Esther manages to roll over and land on four legs in the fall from a height of one foot (30 centimeters). The article Gambale wrote that he expects to continue experiments with the same cat at low altitudes, but their results have not been announced.