More from the email. This one arrived some time ago, but I think it's a hoot!
Scientific TheoriesAn American magazine held a competition, inviting its readers to submit new scientific theories on ANY subject. Below are the winners:
5th place (Subject: Probability Theory)
If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare in Braille.
4th place (Subject: Bio-Mechanics)
Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalise the pressure on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your head unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they then yawn to even it out.
3rd place (Subject: Symbolic Logic)
The Chinese are technologically underdeveloped because each of their alphabetical characters represents a whole word or phrase, rather than a single letter. Thus they cannot use acronyms to communicate technical ideas at a faster rate.
2nd place (Subject: Newtonian Mechanics)
Deforestation may cause earthquakes, tidal waves, or even the total destruction of our planet. Just as a figure-skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to the body, the cutting down of tall trees may cause the Earth to spin dangerously fast on its axis with disastrous results.
Winner (Subject: Perpetual Motion)
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands buttered side down. Therefore, if a slice of toast is strapped to a cat's back, buttered side up, and the animal is then dropped, the two opposing forces will cause it to hover, spinning inches above the ground. If enough toast-laden felines were used, they could form the basis of a high-speed monorail system.
... and then this reply was received from one of the recipients:
“I've been thinking about this cat/toast business for a while. In the buttered toast case, it's the butter that causes it to land buttered side down - it doesn't have to be toast, the theory works equally well with Jacob's crackers. So to save money you just miss out the toast – and butter the cats. Also, should there be an imbalance between the effects of cat and butter, there are other substances that have a stronger affinity for carpet. Probability of carpet impact is determined by the following simple formula:
p = s * t(t)/t(c)
where p is the probability of carpet impact, s is the "stain" value of the toast-covering substance - an indicator of the effectiveness of the toast topping in permanently staining the carpet.
Chicken Tikka Masala, for example, has a very high s value, while the s value of water is zero.
t(c) and t(t) indicate the tone of the carpet and topping - the value of p being strongly related to the relationship between the colour of the carpet and topping, as even chicken tikka masala won't cause a permanent and obvious stain if the carpet is the same colour.
So it is obvious that the probability of carpet impact is maximised if you use chicken tikka masala and a white carpet - in fact this combination gives a p value of one, which is the same as the probability of a cat landing on its feet. Therefore a cat with chicken tikka masala on its back will be certain to hover in mid air, while there could be problems with buttered toast as the toast may fall off the cat, causing a terrible monorail crash resulting in nauseating images of members of the royal family visiting accident victims in hospital, and politicians saying it wouldn't have happened if their party was in power as there would have been more investment in cat-toast glue research.
Therefore it is in the interests not only of public safety but also public sanity if the buttered toast on cats idea is scrapped, to be replaced by a monorail powered by cats smeared with chicken tikka masala floating above a rail made from white shag pile carpet.”
OP
