Slow Motion Flipping Cat Physics | Smarter Every Day 58

Hey it's me Destin welcome back to Smarter Every Day. So you've probably observed

that cats almost always land on their feet. Today's question is why.

Like most simple questions there's a very complex answer. For instance

let me re-word this question. How does a cat go from feet up

to feet down in a falling reference frame without violating

the conservation of angular momentum. Now I've studied free falling bodies,

my own in fact, in several different environments and once I get my angular rotation started

in one direction, I can't stop it. Today, we're gonna use a high speed camera, we're not

gonna use Alley, cause this is my daughter's cat, I don't want to hurt it. We're gonna use a stunt cat.

Let me introduce you to Gigi the stunt cat.

[music]

I'll just flip the video vertical, and then motion track

the cat. It's just gonna take a lot more effort in post. We're gonna try to do

it in a way that doesn't make anybody mad. That's pretty hard to do.

You've gotta drop a cat. Ready Gigi? Good.

Checking out the high speed data there Gigi?