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- what would dogs and hamsters feel when falling from a ceiling into an auditorium full of kids? www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2010/12/skydiving-pets-and-flesh-jelly-seasonal-science-on-tv.html
- Are we still trying to understand the catproblem?
I also think that the student from Baltimore has made an important point. If we take the assumptions and implications made here, this option, even without knowing the exact physics, should totally be considered.
Have a look at this, as far as I understood we are still trying to explain why, from the injured cat population, the ones falling 9 or more floors and 1 to 5 floors get injured less than the ones falling 5 to 9 floors. And it seems that we are trying to see if reaching terminal velocity plays here a role. Well to me it seems that if we try to explain the catproblem with the terminal velocity, we need to know (if your are a physicist) or assume if after reaching terminal speed the cat slows down and infer it get’s injured less. Or we assume that the cat reaches constant speed, but than we need additional factors to explain why then it would get less injured with 9 or more floors, as it should get equally injured or more, given the assumption that higher velocity causes more severe injuries.
So let's imagine at this idea. Suppose we can only use the following two rules (which seemed to be the implicit and explicit assumptions made by most of us here):
1. The cat reaches terminal velocity after say n floors.
2. Higher velocity causes more severe injuries.
So consider the first rule and let’s assume that the cat after say n floors reaches this terminal velocity. Then which implications do we have to consider? As said above we need to know or assume that:
a. The speed reaches constant velocity.
b. The speed decreases.
c. The speed increases.
Option c seems absurd to me, so let’s first consider a. The speed stabilizes after reaching terminal velocity. This means that after say n floors the cat should not fall any faster than when falling n or more floors. Hence the cat’s injuries should not be much worse than when falling less than n floors. Now, we see that with 1 to 9 floors this hypotheses would work and given this also after 9 floors the injuries should be equal or get worse. But they get less! So this option cannot fully explain the data. This means, that either the assumption is wrong, or we have to infer another factor that can explain the outcome, say relaxation or anything else, that we could come up with, which seemed the preferred option of Jad and Robert.
But what about option b? Suppose the speed of the falling cat decreases after reaching terminal velocity. What does that mean for our assumptions? This would mean, that after say n floors when terminal speed was reached the cat will fall slower. But then given the axioma that cats will get injured more with accelarating speed, the injuries should also get less. Say that the terminal speed is reached after falling 9 or more floors, then this would mean that it falls slower after 10 or more floors and actually would get less injured. No contradiction with the data presented to us.
What do you think?
