FILMS IN COLLEGE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 115, 11 November 1935, Page 3

FILMS IN COLLEGE

CAT AS STAR ACTOR

LANDING ON FOUR FEET

(From "The Pqst's" Representative.) SYDNEY, October 29.

With the house cat as one of the principal actors, slow motion films are being used at Xavier College, Melbourne, to illustrate fundamental principles of physics and science. The pictures were taken by the science master and, projected on a screen in the laboratory as part of the normal class lessons.

One film demonstrates the principle known to science as the principle of angular momentum, or to the layman as the reason why a cat, dropped from any height, always manages to land on its feet. For this, the aid of the house cat was enlisted in the cause o£ science, and while the science master operated the camera, the cat was dropped back downwards and feet pointing to the sky, and all of its muscular movements were recorded. The result was a film which, when reproduced in slow motion, showed the students exactly what the text-books meant by the explanation:—

"The cat first pulls in its forelegs and turns its forepart round. It then pulls in its hind legs, extends its foralegs at right angles, and rotates its hind part in "the opposite sense to that in which it was last rotated. This will result in the forepart being rotated back again, but by a lesser amount than before, So the cat is permanently slightly rotated, both fore and aft, in the direction of the original rotation, and given time (that is, distance), repetitions of the cycle continue until the rotation is 180 degrees." The manner in which the cat uses its hind legs in turning over is identical with the movements in what is known as the "roll meihod" in high jumping by athletes.

During the experiments with ths house cat, which is a general favourite at Xavier, precautions were taken to ensure that it was in no way injured.

The second film illustrated Gallileo's principle that bodies fall with equal velocity irrespective of weight. Two weights, one of 101b and on» of 21b, were dropped from a given height and their flight was photographed. The slow-motion picture shows them striking the ground at the same instant. The science master explained thai other scientific truths, including the laws of magnetic induction and the lonic theory, could be illustrated by slow-motion film. Film classes havo been in progress at Xavier College for about three months, and are cxtrcmoly popular among the boys.

liazors were used in a docker's riot ai 6an Francisco recently, eight men being seriously injured.