Whilst Sir Isaac Newton is best known for discovering the law of gravity as he sat under an apple tree, he also has other discoveries and inventions to his credit. The humble cat flap originated out of one of his other experiments when he was studying colour and the order it came in a prism. He went up to his attic where there was only one window and in order to control light, he needed to black out the room.
His cat loved to be with him, and she constantly nosed the door open, which would then let the light in — thus spoiling his experiments. Not wanting to upset her, he decided to cut a small opening in the doorway which he then covered with felt attached to the top of the opening — and voila! It is also said that the smaller hole was never used because the little kittens preferred to follow their mother and pass through the one with the larger diameter.
Brain teaser 1: This door of the Newton residence conceals these six cat holes of different sizes. The objective is to find their locations in the door, taking into account the following:. Finally, and most revealing, the first known mention of this story dates from , signed by one J.
Brain teaser 2 : We are now approaching a second door of the Newton residence in which six other cat doors of different sizes are hidden. Again, the goal is to find their locations in the door taking into account the same rules as in the previous case. Assuming therefore that it is an invented story, there are two main and opposing theories regarding its possible origin, or rather the reasons that could have led someone to spread it.
One of them suggests that it could be an attempt to humanise the figure of the mathematician and physicist by presenting him as an animal lover with a special predilection and concern for the pussycat. In contrast, the other argues that the objective of this story was just the opposite, to ridicule the scientist by presenting him as a genius incapable or so distracted and abstracted in his thinking as not to realise that a single large hole was sufficient so that all the cats, big and small, could pass through.
In the famous paradox, a cat is enclosed in a box with a radioactive material and a poison that is activated if an atom of this material decays spontaneously. The principle of quantum superposition suggests that until someone opens the box, the cat is both alive and dead, in a superposition of states.
And in the same way, when opening the box to see the cat, the observer acts on the system, thereby affecting the result. In an memoir of his years as a Trinity scholar a century after Newton, mathematician John M.
Told initially to illustrate the foolishness of the wise, this much-recounted tale was seized upon by some cat fancier for the different purpose of establishing that one of the great scientific minds had devoted a few clock cycles to inventing a convenience for cats.
This is the form in which the tale is mostly seen today. Merely cutting a hole in a larger door as an animal entrance long predates Newton. As for actress-slash-weapons-inventors: in most of the celebrity-inventor stories you hear about, the celebrity is more or less in the business of inventing things, or had others do the inventing for them.
For example, filmmaker George Lucas has his name on many inventions, but most came out of his movie special-effects shop, Industrial Light and Magic. Nonetheless, a few Hollywood types did invent things that had little or nothing to do with their careers. He came up with a modern version of calculus although not the modern notation. He described and explained a little thing called gravity. But he also is said to have invented a very useful thing for cats, in a very stupid way.
Most contemporary and biographical sources on Isaac Newton agree on to facts - he was a jerk, and he was brilliant. There's no disputing the second - or is there? One modern legend has Isaac Newton inventing something that pet owners use all the time: the cat door.
The legend is used to augment the sense of Newton's brilliance.
0コメント