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Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics Of Magic Windows. Engineer Matt Ferraro shows how to make transparent acrylic squares with holographic images embedded in them.
posted by Cash4Lead on Aug 25, 2021 - 22 comments

...Takagi and colleagues observed that cats tend to stare longer at rattling boxes during the experiment, which suggest that they correctly anticipated the presence of an object based on the container's rattling sound. The felines also stared longer when a turned over box yielded unexpected results that defy the laws of physics. Takagi explained that these animals use a causal-logical understanding of noise or sounds when predicting the presence of invisible objects.

Cats Utilize Physics? Study Says Cats Understand Physics And Use Law Of Cause And Effect To Detect Hiding Prey
posted by y2karl on Jun 15, 2016 - 74 comments

The physics of how cats flip their bodies to land feet first also allows spacecraft to turn. Flipping cats [previously] is interesting. It's even more interesting if your dad works at NASA and you have access to people who use flipping-cat physics to make spacecraft turn in space.
posted by milkb0at on Aug 26, 2012 - 28 comments

High Speed Video of Flipping Cats A video in which a man claims watching him attempt to flip a cat (without pissing people off) will make you smarter. Bonus intro video. Gratuitous Father Guido Sarducci
posted by cjorgensen on Aug 10, 2012 - 41 comments

Do cats always land on their feet? No. Unless...
posted by furtive on May 11, 2011 - 35 comments

Weightless Cats and other fun experiments. An excerpt from from coverage of research at the Aerospace Medical Division Hq 657Oth Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories including scenes of F-104 seat ejection; drop tests from C-130 and ejection from F-106; effects of weightlessness on cats and pigeons in a C-131; test subjects in water tank, on centrifuge, in heat chamber and on complex coordinator. Also, scenes of vertical deceleration tower, incline impact test facility, vertical accelerator, equilibrium chair and vibration platform. More videos can be found at Airboyd.tv: Accident Animations, Aviation Films, Military Flight Training Films, and Space Shuttle Vidoes.
posted by Fizz on Jan 15, 2011 - 31 comments

Scientists have finally discovered tyhe physics of how cats drink.
posted by Daddy-O on Nov 12, 2010 - 50 comments

Phriday Physics Phun! What is the force Superman exerts to stop a plane from crashing into the ground, or the speed and mass of Vince Vaughn's winning Dodgeball shot? What's the force exerted by a Dominique Wilkins windmill slam dunk, or the speed of a retired Charles Barkley? What's the frequency of a cat's purr? ...the mass of a snowflake? ...the pressure inside a can of soda? ..the reaction time of the human fingertip? The Physics Factbook, via hypertextbook.com, is "an encyclopedia of scientific essays written by high school students that can be used by anybody," containing over 800 entries and special topics. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on Jan 16, 2009 - 28 comments