Your chance of surviving a fall of 50 feet (approximately 4 stories) is about 50%, while almost no one who falls 6 stories will be around to tell their tale. However, in a study conducted by Manhattan veterinarians, Drs. Wayne Whitney and Cheryl Mehlhaff, it was discovered that out of 115 cases of cats falling (accidentally) from multi-story heights, 90% of them survived. An even more surprising result is that if a cat falls from more than 7 stories its chance of survival doubles, compared to a cat having fallen from 2 to 7 stories (a story averages about 12 feet). No wonder cats are fabled to have nine lives. It turns out that the two most important variables which contribute to the cat's survival are its ability to land on its feet and its reaching terminal velocity (both of which involve a fair deal of physics).
Whitney & Melhaff's Study
Cats' apparent fearlessness concerning heights leads to many accidental falls. In fact so many cats are brought to veterinarians for treatment after a fall, that in 1976 Dr. Gordon Robinson coined the term feline high-rise syndrome to describe the resulting pattern of injuries. Eleven years later Drs. Wayne Whitney and Cheryl Mehlhaff at the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan conducted a study over a five month period on cats brought in for treatment after a fall. They compiled a database of 115 cats who fell a range of two to thirty-two stories, primarily ending their falls on concrete pavement. The mean fall was 5.5 stories. Three of the cats were dead upon arrival and 8 more died in the next twenty-four hours, leaving 104 living cats or about 90%. This is a remarkable statistic.
When the height the cats fell is taken into account, it is found that only 5% of the cats who fell seven ...
... middle of paper ...
... a small amount of mass, but also their ability comes from their flying squirrel (relaxed) posture upon reaching terminal velocity and from their superb inner gyroscope.
Works Cited
* Diamond, Jared. "How Cats Survive Falls from New York Skyscapers," Natural History 20-26; August 1989.
* Diamod, Jared. "Why cats have nine lives," Nature 332, 586-587; April 14, 1988.
* Fredrickson, J. E. "The tail-less cat in free-fall," The Physics Teacher. 27, 620-625; November 1989.
* Halliday, David, Robert Resnick and Jearl Walker. Fundamentals of Physics, 5th ed. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1997.
* Mehlhaff, Cheryl and Wayne Whitney. "High-rise syndrome in cats," J. Amer. Vet. Med. Assoc. 191, 1399-1403;1987.
* "Terminal Velocity," Discover 9,10; August 1988.
* Von Baeyer, Hans Christian. "Swing Shift," The Sciences 30, 2-4; May/June 1990.
...Mary. In his intense situation, there is no way such an act could be considered a mishap, and Bigger even feels better about himself when it is done. All of this leads to beg the questions, How much of a role do our friendly little felines play in our day to day lives? Are they still living up to their reputation today?
At Diversicare Rehabilitation, DVCR, between the months of May and July, there were fifty-two falls. Of these falls, twenty-two resulted in major injuries and were reportable to state. All the reportable falls resulted in a form of injury. The injuries noted were ten hip fractures, five femur, three shoulder and four elbow fractures. Out of all the falls, twelve falls with major injuries occurred to residents who had suffered a fall within the past week. Two falls were reportable to the coroner but they were both ruled non-related. In this project, there will be a review of the causes of falls at DVCR. The project will review main reasons why this is such a problem at this facility. The project will focus on the preventable falls and those that may have been avoided. There will be recommendations to prevent falls and an evaluation will be done to determine whether the recommendations are effective in preventing falls.
Minnie’s right foot led the way and paused on each step. Like a young child first learning to master the staircase she would wait for her left foot to catch up before leading again with her right. Her feet glided lightly across the wooden steps and only the dust particles felt her movement. She seemed to have a pillow of air floating underneath her. Quite ironically, with each descending stride her body took, her hand would tightly grip the banister until her veins were crushed against her tightened skin with no way out.
It is important that key factors in determining who is and who is not a risk to fall are sought out by the health care team. In this paper we will focus on how to determine who is a fall risk.
Strain, George M. "Congenital deafness in dogs and cats." Compend Contin Educ Pract Vet 13
Based on the review of previous falls, the statistics indicate that falls and patient injuries have decreased from the previous year by ten percent. By utilizing evidence-based practice and synthesis of internal and external evidence the fall prevention program proved to be effective and results in increased patient safety and improved overall patient outcomes.
“Circulatory disease, obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, and arthritis were each associated with a higher odds of falling, even with adjustment for drug use and other potential confounding factors” (Lawlor, Patel, & Ebrahim, 2003, p. 713). These diseases are associated with the higher odds of falling, because when someone gets these diseases, it messes them up on the inside and they cannot feel like they used to anymore. These diseases can numb a person, so that they cannot feel a limb and that is how they have the major risk of falling. In the study that was done to show the risks for falling showed in a chart that arthritis was the highest cause for falling in women. Arthritis starts to make a woman 's body start to hurt in such a way where they cannot move that much anymore and so the risk for falling gets
Bickel, C. M. "The Therapeutic Roles of Cat Mascots with a Hospital-based Geriatric Population: A Staff Survey." Gerontologist 19 (1979): 368-72.
Real controlled freefall began with the French and is brought to the United States by Jacque Istel in the late 1950’s. Istel and Lew Sanborn (USPA License D-1) were the
His second attempt was again a failure but of a different and more serious type. The momentum of Jim’s feet kept going as he grasped the rim. This motion swung him upside down forcing him to lose his grip and fall ten very long feet.
When taking steps to analyze and apply intervention strategies for falls, we must examine the factors that cause these occurrences. There are numerous reasons that falls occur, such as intrinsic and or extrinsic risk factors. Intrinsic risk factors for falls may be due to changes that are part of the normal aging process and acute or chronic conditions. According to Zheng, Pan and Hua et al. (2013), about 35-45 percent of individuals who are usually older than 65 years and other 50 percent of the elderly individuals report cases of fall every year. Extrinsic factors are those related to physical environment such as lack of grab bars, poor condition of floor surfaces, inadequate or improper use of assistive devices (Currie). Patient falls is not an easy thing to eliminate. With many clinical challenges, there’s no easy answer to the challenges posed by patient falls; howe...
Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is one of the top five killers of domestic cats in the U.S. In fact 3% of healthy cats were reported to have contracted the disease in the year 1999. FIV is a fatal disease and interestingly enough most FIV cats don’t die of the disease it self by by other infections caused by their lowed immune system. FIV causes a deficiency in the immune system and makes cats very susceptible to a huge variety of medical problems basically because they have no fighting power.
The grasshopper jumps better relative to humans because grasshoppers has a longer angle of rotation when it bends to jump than a human would have while jumping. This hypothesis was supported by the data that we collected because the mean for angle rotation was 93 of humans and 147 for grasshoppers and was only time that it was greater.
I have come to these predictions using scientific knowledge. The heavier something is, the faster they fall, so I decided to base my first prediction on this fact. I based the second hypothesis on the parachutist example in my introduction.
2) Fundamentals of Physics Extended: Fifth Edition. David Hanley, Robert Resnick, Jearl Walker. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc, New York, Chichester, Brisbane, Toronto, Singapore. 1997.