How can cats turn their bodies around to land on their feet if they fall and how…

How can cats turn their bodies around to land on their feet if they fall and how can people do tricks in the air when they are skydiving if you’re supposed to “keep doing what you’ve been doing” when you leave the ground?

Cats manage to twist themselves around by exerting torques within their own bodies. They aren’t rigid, so that one half of the cat can exert a torque on the other half and vice versa. Even though the overall cat doesn’t change its rotation, parts of the cat change their individual rotations and the cat manages to reorient itself. It goes from not rotating but upside down to not rotating but right side up. Overall, it never had any angular velocity. As for skydiving, that is mostly a matter of torques from the air. As you fall, the air pushes on you and can exert torques on you about your center of mass. The result is rotation.

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