Cats and physics

A few days ago, it occurred to me that--being a cat lover and owner--had I been the observer of Schrödinger's cat, the cat would have come out alive, because if particles can influence outcomes, surely the particles that are involved in forming my thought processes would influence the collapse of different potentials into the cat being alive rather than dead from whatever nastiness was in that box.

That's my reasoning, anyway, even if it does sound a bit tin-foil-hat.

I posted this on Facebook. A friend responded that regardless, Schrödinger should not own cats. I agree. And despite the fact that Einstein had some good things to say about cats, that he would propose--in the course of his correspondence with Schrödinger--putting an explosive in that box along with the cat makes me think that he might not have been someone in which to put full confidence vis a vis cat care.

And then I remembered a while back that I had Facebook-posted that yet another physicist--Sir Isaac Newton--was certainly a cat lover, because he had invented the cat door not only for his cat, but another little one especially for her kittens. Clearly this scientist was one who had the utmost consideration for felines.



Newman: "Is asleep. Go away."

Not long ago, my husband--an engineer--commented that was remarkable how our cat, Newman, has such perfect instinctive balance in whatever he does.

What is it with science-types and cats? While I am sure there are dog lovers amongst science folk, there seems to have been special attention paid to cats by scientists. Perhaps it is a cat's instinctive balance that brings to it some scientific focus. There is, of course, something mathematical about balance, and an acute awareness of physics would eventually bring a curious mind to wonder: what is it about cats that make them do what they do?

Of course, I did an internet search to find out if anyone has looked into this, and sure enough, some MIT scientists have observed cats (specifically, one scientist's house cat, Cutta Cutta) lapping up water and the physics involved in it.

Which of course gave rise to all sorts of comments and questions on the above blog regarding whether the roughness of the cat's tongue helps it lap up water (it's the curl in the tongue as well as timing) in the unique way it does, and how it evolved in such a way to have such measurably precise movements.

And while all this scientific speculation is going on about Dr. Stocker's cat, I can imagine Cutta Cutta's attitude would be something akin to this:

With a corollary of: "FOOD. NOW."