Toast

Whilst having a discussion with my girlfriend about alternative ways to get over the biggest river in London without using the dreaded toll bridge that can add up to two hours to any journey, and the suggestion that a catapult would be useless as the car would probably land on its roof killing us both, she suggested putting butter on the bottom of the car because toast always lands butter side down (I am with her for looks and charming personality). I argued that toast lands on different sides you just remember it more when it lands on the buttered side. What do you think?

Your wrong... i can't remember where i read it now but it actually lands butter side down slightly more often due to the weight distribution... but im sure the wizard will tell me that the slight difference is due to variance =P

Quote: Morphius

Your wrong... i can't remember where i read it now but it actually lands butter side down slightly more often due to the weight distribution... but im sure the wizard will tell me that the slight difference is due to variance =P

Butter is very bad for you, come up with another plan.

It landed butter side down more often when the Mythbusters tested it. Thats about as scientific as it gets for me I'm afraid.

Quote: Croupier

It landed butter side down more often when the Mythbusters tested it. Thats about as scientific as it gets for me I'm afraid.

It might've been mythbusters i saw it on!

MythBusters DID do a piece on it.

The MythBusters, being into over building everything, built whacky contraptions trying to test the theory that it's the butter itself that makes it fall butter side down. That's not the case at all.


The big point that they glossed over is this: When toast falls, where does it fall FROM?

Typically, it's on the edge of a table, and gets nudged off. The height of the table, along with the size and position of the bread, is corect to give the toast a half turn (or maybe it's a one and a half), so that it usually lands butter side down. The 'spin' is provided when the leading edge starts to fall while the taling edge is still on the table.

Here's one of my all-time favorite scientific theories:


GRAND PRIZE WINNER (Subject: Perpetual Motion)--When a cat is
dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it
always lands buttered side down. It was proposed to strap giant slabs
of hot buttered toast to the back of a hundred tethered cats; the two
opposing forces will cause the cats to hover, spinning inches above the
ground. Using the giant buttered toast/cat array, a high-speed monorail
could easily link New York with Chicago.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Typically, it's on the edge of a table, and gets nudged off. The height of the table, along with the size and position of the bread, is corect to give the toast a half turn (or maybe it's a one and a half), so that it usually lands butter side down.

You're absolutely right, and it's a half turn. If you dropped it higher, it would do a full turn and land butter-side up. That's why the Mythbusters droped their toast from the top of the workshop.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Typically, it's on the edge of a table, and gets nudged off. The height of the table, along with the size and position of the bread, is corect to give the toast a half turn (or maybe it's a one and a half), so that it usually lands butter side down. The 'spin' is provided when the leading edge starts to fall while the taling edge is still on the table.

If you think about it, it's reasonably intuitive: if the bread is slowly turning, it needs to make between 1/4 turn and 3/4 turn to land butter-side down since it can't land on its edge. But thinking of it that way, the probability that the bread will rotate between 1/4 and 3/4 turn in about 3 feet seems much more likely than the alternative (between 0 and 1/4, or between 3/4 and 1 1/4, etc.)