You know - the one where it was against the laws of physics for any animal to be able to jump higher than three feet - and any observation to the contrary was ‘anecdotal’ or otherwise worthless?
When the video freezes at 0:31, no part of the cat’s body is lower than the chin of the person standing alongside - this is a height of at least four feet - probably five.
The cat’s centre of mass is above the person’s head - five feet plus. The cat’s front paw is nearly touching the ceiling - probably seven feet or so.
Can anyone supply a link to said thread? And isn’t the high-jump record for humans something north of eight feet? Or do we get a pass on those pesky laws of physics?
The argument re: human high jumpers is that although the body passes over the bar, the centre of mass passes below it (because the body is arched, and the centre of mass of an arch or horseshoe shape can be placed in mid-air).
Maybe Blake will come along and explain that the cat scrambled and clawed his way up the air in the room. Remember, “the plural of anecdote is not data.”
But not 5 feet below it. The high jump world record is 2.45 metres, or eight feet and a smidgen under half an inch. No amount of contortion is going to put your centre of gravity five feet below the arch of your back. (I know I’m preaching to the choir here, btw.)
I wonder if Blake was somehow getting confused with the principle that you can’t siphon water above a certain height (about 34 feet IIRC)? If anyone can provide video evidence of a kitten being siphoned over a greater height, I’m sure we’d all be interested to see it.
Yes. And while I’m no fan of Blake and certainly believed he was factually wrong, I must say I was squarely on his side there. We never accept anecdotal evidence for anything else, but here suddenly we were supposed to and if you wanted to uphold the same standards we always do you were an idiot. Huh?
This reminds me of another old thread, talking about the then upcoming 1.10 patch for Diablo II that would be a major overhaul of the game mechanics. One poster was adamant that there would be no such patch. He was not heard from when the patch was released.
Because the “suck” of a siphon is actually the push of atmospheric pressure on the water surface outside the tube. If you’re siphoning at normal atmospheric pressure, the atmosphere only pushes with 1 atmosphere of pressure, which is the same pressure as that exerted by a column of water 10.3 metres high. So when the column of water gets that high, the pressures are equal and you can’t raise it any higher.
BTW I realised I made a fundamental error with the high-jump example, as, of course, a 6ft high-jumper will already have their centre of gravity about 3ft off the ground, so if they can raise it by another three feet then they only need to have their CoG about two feet lower than their back to clear an 8ft bar.
It’s 32 feet, and the reason is that atmospheric pressure is 14 psi. A column of water 1 square inch in cross section and 32 feet high weighs 14 pounds, so a siphon, which is driven by atmospheric pressure, can’t hold up a longer column of water.
I’m pretty sure that most of us accept anecdotal evidence regularly, unless it lies outside the normal range of our experiences. I’m also pretty sure Blake was characterized as unreasonable in that thread, not as an idiot.
On the water-siphoning thing, I believe it’s actually possible, under very specific conditions, to siphon a column taller than that - because an unbroken, contained column of pure water has tensile strength. In practice, I expect it’s very difficult to make that work though.
I’d have to read it again from start to finish to be sure, but my memory of it is that actually, Blake was the one doing the lion’s share of characterising
Much as I hate to sound like I’m siding with Blake (I’m not), that doesn’t mean much. If your centre of gravity is somewhere around your belly button, and is three feet off the ground when you’re standing up, and if you can tuck your legs in even 18 inches or so at the top of your jump (which will only raise your CoG a comparatively small amount above your belly button - even less if you crouch your head and arms downwards at the same time) then you could easily clear well over four feet, without raising your centre of gravity by more than three feet.
When you consider that a lot of NBA players are a lot more than 6ft tall, their CoG might start off three and a half feet or more above the ground, with even more leeway for tucking their legs up.
I suspect the limit for raising your CoG is not much more than three feet for humans, but cats are much springier, as we have seen.
No need to rely on memory, we have the link. Blake lists good cites in post 21. Desmostylus responds claiming that his personal observation negates Blake’s disproof. That’s not the Straight Dope way.
Blake says that he would be quite happy to be wrong but wants to see a solid cite (post 33). He admits his ignorance and provides another good cite (post 42). More anecdotes are presented. Desmostylus calls him a fool and says Blake doesn’t have evidence that cats can’t jump six feet (post 58), while presenting no evidence of his own. And so it goes on.
Yeah, but on the way to that, he came out with bald assertions (also not the SD way, if I’m not mistaken), and generally alienated everyone else by insisting they were imagining things (look at post #23).
There’s a difference between anecdotal accounts being not necessarily reliable, and them being worthy of scorn and derision.
Remember, “the plural of anecdote is not data.”