• Question: When toast falls why does it always fall butter face down?

    Asked by Unknown32 to Andy, Dwaine, Natt, Priya, Tatiana on 23 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Priya Hari

      Priya Hari answered on 23 Jun 2015:


      There are two explanations to this:

      1. Murphy’s law or Sod’s law: Thing’s always happen the way you don’t it to, just because.

      2. It depends on the height of your table, but chance are when you drop the toast it started off being butter side up. Usually the table is only far enough for the toast to turn 180 degrees in the air so it will land butter face down. Maybe if you were super tall and the table was lower, the toast might rotate 360 degree and land butter side up. If you drop it on the floor, it depends how many times your toast might spin.

      The weight of the butter is so little, it shouldn’t have an effect.

      If I really wanted to know, i’d be tempted to set up the experiment for myself and drop 100 slices of buttered toast and see what happens.

    • Photo: Andrew Scott

      Andrew Scott answered on 23 Jun 2015:


      I think Priya’s right with explanation 2. I seem to remember someone building a really high table to demonstrate this.

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