This is the first one that, I think, will actually work:
h/t: Jim B.
Perpetual motion machine
January 19, 2012 • 2:09 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
My gosh! Apostasy! 🙂
Although there seems to be a lot of that going around these days ….
Apostasy?
Worse!
Taking Carnot’s name in vain is a deadly sin and heathens unto the Laws of Thermodynamics shall not be suffered!
By Lord Kelvin, I say we burn Jerry at the stake.
(How many cords of wood will be necessary to maximize the entropy of the miscreant is left as an exercise to the reader)
🙂
That too, although I was referring to Jerry’s somewhat incongruous manifestation of some “Far Side”-ish humor about cats. And Joseph Hoffmann’s condemnation or at least rather pointed criticism of the Catholic Church ….
I wonder at what speed this thing will turn?
The speed of spite?
Not quite as fast as the spread of rumours which seem to be powered by FTL neutrinos from the future(s) ….
Nah, won’t work. Both the bread and the cat have to be falling to initiate the spin. So, you’d have to hoist the contraption up over and over again. You get some spin, but that is offset by the energy needed to hoist the contraption up all the time… :-p
Put it in a geostationary orbit, which is effectively constant freefall…
Hmm…but which way is down in microgravity?
I’d hypothesize that the lack of a specific reference plane as “down” nullifies the spinning effect.
The table they fell off is the reference. Get a table up there.
You have all forgotten to factor in Zeno’s paradox and Deeppacked Chopra. The CatBread will begin to spin while falling to the floor. However, as Zeno shows, it will never actually reach the floor so it’s spin will continue to accelerate as it falls and falls. Now, as Chopra shows, both the Bread and the Cat (Schrodinger’s we will assume) will attempt to dominate quantum reality causing the CatBread to spin so fast it will reach lightspeed, converting itself into energy.
this is how we will achieve cold fusion.
This problem can be solved by adding a simple universal joint to the shaft which will allow the catbread to drop. The device will then operate with the catbread moving in a rotating and bobbing fashion. I say that this should be patented right away!
You might have to add a fly wheel to keep the rotation going since the effect will only be engaged on the down cycle…
Write it up and send it here: http://www.flywheelmag.com/
What you’d need to do is strap strong magnets to the cat and then insert it into a coil of wire. That’d work.
I expect Ben to now show us how to build a hypercomputer from this.
I’m not entirely sure, but I think you need to start with a piping hot extra-strong pot of tea, and I’m afraid I’m almost all out of the good stuff….
b&
Paradox
and a hypercomputer is essential.
Sadly, the cat will age and die, the butter will curdle and the bread will go mouldy, requiring input cats, bread and butter.
Thus preserving the laws of thermodynamics.
Have you any idea how close you fools came to supporting one of the basic falsehoods of creationism?
Are you all mad???
No, no. If the energy from the spin exceeds the amount you have to feed the cat you still get a perpetual motion machine. The term doesn’t just mean “runs forever” but more broadly, gives off more energy than it uses.
But if one just wanted a cat related engine, as opposed to a perpetual motion machine, one need look no further than the door generator, in which cats train their human owners to open the door for the cat no matter what side of it they are on, and regardless of whether the cat actually wants to traverse through the door when opened.
I know, but the question is, how long can the cat-bread motor spin, and how much energy can it generate before it requires replacement parts? Will the energy involved in their production be greater than that which is generated by the motor?
Has no-one given this any thought?
Also, there are waste products to consider.
I thought that the positioning of the spindle solved this problem.
*ouch* >_<
Maybe we can recycle the cat scat into margarine ? and the margarine as cat’s food. NOM nom .. nom own scat ..
very funny indeed!
Dear Mr. Goldberg,
Great work! I think you’re on to somthin’ here.
Have you thought of publishing this in the
Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings?
HA HA!
+1
No. No. No.
The cat will wriggle out of the harness, lick the butter off of the bread, whap the bread under the table where it will collect dust woofies and rot, and walk off laughing at you. L
How does a cat fall, when it’s stuck to an axle?
See “universal joint” in comments above.
Hmm. Neil Degrass Tyson mentioned the cat and the toast problem on the radio a few weeks ago.
His take was that the cat would never hit the ground, IIRC.
This one is old enough that I *think* that Douglas Adams could have seen it in time to put it in H2G2 as “the way to fly is to throw yourself at the ground, and miss”. It was certainly around in the New Scientist in the early 1980s. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone pointed out a scratchy recording of William Thompson explaining the system into Edison’s new-fangled speech-recording-contraption, along with his proof of why it doesn’t violate an laws of his. (Unfortunately, the cylinder was too short to get the whole presentation.)
I have a very specific memory of reading about the cat/bread in Omni Magazine in the early 1980s.
I dunno. I think there may be some Photoshop trickery at work here.
As a true perpetual motion machine, this old proposal comes back again and again.
Sorry. Logic fail…
Premises:
1. Cat will fall feet-side-down
2. Bread will fall butter-side-down
From these we can’t conclude that the cat-bread will rotate.
However, we can conclude that the cat-bread will not fall. I think you’ve just invented an anti-gravity device.
I think it would both rotate and not fall. so we’ve just developed perpetual motion and anti-gravity.
This means we do not need a shaft. We simply attach a ring of permanent magnets to the cat and let the cat/butter system spin inside a wire coil, thus generating an electric current.
I even have a name for the device. PURR-petual motion. Somehow I don’t think the cat will be purring though.
Of course they’d rotate, as long as you carefully match cat and bread. If you attach a right-hand-screw bit of bread to a left-hand-screw cat, they’d cancel each other out, of course.
Do I need to refer you to my patent application? You’ve violated my patent, and you’ll be receiving a letter from my lawyer.
That looks like one crappy sandwich.
From the late Douglas Adams, of course.
If the entire device was placed in a sealed box with a radioactive element triggered poison vial, we would have a four-state Schrödinger’s Cat: It would simultaneously be Up, Down, Alive and Dead.
Think of the quantum computing possibilities! Not only would it have vastly superior computational capabilities, it would have unlimited power to run too.
And it would be spinning like a Top with a stick up its Bottom, and even though all cats have Charm, this would be very Strange.
All in all, Ladies and Gentledudes, I think we have a Quark Cat…
Ah, the real secret behind Legion’s bluebox.
The flaw in the design is obvious. The inventor has clearly never tried to get a collar on a cat. The two collars necessary to affix the bread? I think not.
this one is hilarious
The only thing I know of that comes close to a PMM is the atom. Of course, you don’t get any useful work out of it.
You could if you removed unfair union monopolies and handed it a mop. Then those lazy atoms would learn a good work ethic.
*****Help me, I’m possessed by Newt Gingrich*********
Well, as I’m sure Santorum would say, “That’s fine for the “blah” atoms but what about …?”
I really don’t want to be the sucker that has to strap the cat in that thing. I still have scars from trying to give medications …
Wouldn’t this violate Tabby’s Law, that cats can produce no useful work? I think a singularity would be produced, thus causing the end of the world (as we know it).
SEO: You have put your finger on the real principle this machine violates (forget thermodynamics!)
Something about this makes me want to say “don’t quit your day-job”.
There is a logic in this but it lacks the mathematics. You first have to calculate the force involved by the buttery bread to spin face-down and the cat’s force to spin feet down. Then you have to calculate the quantities of both that you need so the forces match perfectly. Then you have a spinning device, possibly anti-gravitational too, especially if the device is also sited with a magnet that matches the exact magnetic field of the earth, only opposite polarity. Also, you would need a stabilizer for all these forces involved as the device looks fairly unstable. I can go on…
You can also invert the device to create an anti-gravity levitation machine. Affix buttered side of bread to cat’s feet, so that that the combo can only land on either the cat’s back or the unbuttered side. Since we know neither is possible (heh), the device must remain floating in mid-air.
These comments just made my day 😉 I *heart* you guys!
This is like a Stephen Wright routine: “I once put instant coffee in the Microwave. I almost went back in time.”
You can actually get a T-shirt with the cat/toast combination pictured.
Reblogged this on Searching Traveler and commented:
Wow, the Perpetual Motion Machine. Weird but funny. Made me laugh out loud! Ahhhh. Silliness.
I’m off to patent a rotating cat food dispenser…
or…..just two pieces of toast?