Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics

By: Gregory J. Gbur

Narrated by: David Stifel

Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's Summary

How do cats land on their feet? Discover how this question stumped brilliant minds and how its answer helped solve other seemingly impossible puzzles. 

The question of how falling cats land on their feet has intrigued humans since at least the middle of the 19th century. In this playful and eye-opening history, physicist, and cat parent Gregory Gbur explores how attempts to understand the cat-righting reflex have provided crucial insights into puzzles in mathematics, geophysics, neuroscience, and human space exploration. 

The result is an engaging tumble through physics, physiology, photography, and robotics to uncover, through scientific debate, the secret of the acrobatic performance known as cat-turning, the cat flip, and the cat twist. Listeners learn the solution, but also discover that the finer details still inspire heated arguments. As with other cat behavior, the more we investigate, the more surprises we discover. 

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Gregory J. Gbur (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing

great book. poor playback.

playback kept stopping. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15.

Very dense with a wide variety of information

This is not just the history of the scientific investigation into why cats always land on their feet. It touches on a huge variety of topics, from the history of photography to quantum physics and shrodingers cat, as well as the history of weightlessness experiments and even cat authors. Occasionally the book feels a bit distracted, and feels like it could have been about half the length to effectively address the topic, but all of the extra information will still be interesting to anyone who enjoys reading about the history of science and scientific discoveries.

Charming i

An enjoyable collection of diverse informstion turning around CATS through time and disciplines. A fun read.

Adorable and enlightening

I was surprised that this book 1. continued the story of cats landing on their feet throughout and 2. covered such a broad array of topics in the process, including the development of photography, Earth's magnetic poles, and Foucault's pendulum. The reader does the work justice. thoroughly enjoyable!

Fun Feline Physics

I didn’t imagine that there was so much too say about falling cats, but the author covered a lot of ground, from high speed photography to the Hubble discoveries of new galaxies. The author’s descriptions of physical movements were excellent.

Who Knew?

Physics certainly is not my area of knowledge- in fact the last contact with physics as a subject was high school. This book was fascinating in its interweaving of sciences, inventions, and experiments that established fundamental principles in a variety of fields throughout history. The quite large role that cats’ ability to land on their feet in all of this was certainly surprising. After finishing, I still can’t explain a cat’s righting behavior, but I don’t care since it was fascinating to hear about others journeys to try to do so.

A enjoyable & enlightening read

I had no idea that the study of cat physics was so lengthy & deep. I’m interested in physics but I sometimes struggle with the higher concepts. This is the first book that had me mentally visualizing physics problems and trying to sort them out myself. Loving felines doesn’t hurt but it’s not critical. Very engaging & amusing subject and excellent narration. I highly recommend this book.