On the angular motion of a freely falling human or animal body

✍ Scribed by D. J. Gerritsen; M. Kuipers

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 328 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-0833
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00037541

✦ Synopsis

From the earliest times it is known that a cat always falls on its feet even when dropped upside down. This behaviour, clearly showing that in this relation it is not correct to consider an animal body as a rigid one, was qualitatively understood by Lecornu in 1894. Some decades later Rademaker and ter Braak proposed a simple model of the animal body, yet retaining its capacity of turning freely. In this paper after a short historical survey, the main contribution of tile first author to it, a rational analysis of the model is given. This yields quantitative data on the dynamic and kinematical behaviour of the human and the animal body during the free fall in the air, and also while floating in water.