Butter side down

[Tabby]

Look, I may be a little mad, but I've just completed a little experiment in the kitchen. I accidentally dropped a piece of bread on the floor and it landed (of course) butter side down (well, flora side down really).
As I has already made a mess I decided to drop it a further 9 times to see which way it landed. I held it by vertically by a corner to try and be fair. Why did it land 7 times out of ten butter side down?

Try it, I'd love to see if you have the same results as me, or is it just my back luck?

Tabby.

[Oleanda]

Probably the butter/Flora makes that side of the bread heavier!

[tony1941]

Hence the current TV ad for Lurpack "light", where a dropped slice lands butter side up!

[mfewell]

You are right Tabby, it's Sod's Law. Were you shouting at it at the time ?  I find the same, like when you put the last dish on the drainer it falls off and takes all the rest with it, or when you drop the milk bottle top and it lands milkside down, or when you just don't make it quite in time to stop the potato saucepan boiling all over the cooker. Shout at it, it helps.

[Didwot]

The only time that it lands butterside up is if you have foolishly buttered the wrong side.

[sddsddean]

If you have got a cat, trying buttering its back. As a cat supposedly always lands on its feet, it would be interesting to see if the butter made it land 'butter side down' on its back. (Hope you are not an RSPCA Inspector!!)

[Tim Baxter]

The university of Illinois stuck a piece of bread (butter side out) on the back of a cat and dropped it several hundred times from a first floor window.  So, we have 4 conditions, paws first, butter first, side of cat first.  Statistically (there being two sides to the cat) the cat landing on its side should have come up 1:2.  It didn't.  The cat always landed on its feet.

Then they decided that the cat was cheating, using some ancient, innate, imprinted memory of how to twist when tethered to bread and butter.

When they tied its legs and tail together they discovered that statistics won the day, butter. feet, side ratio of 1:1:2.

It only goes to prove that there are ties, damn ties and statistics!

[Sequin]

If you put a piece of buttered toast on a cat's back and dop it, it will hover above the ground, rotating, as the cat, then the toast try to hit the ground first. Connect the cat's tail to a turbine, and hey presto - instant free, perpetual energy (or at least until the toast or cat rots away)!

[Tabby]

Thanks for your answers, but is someone else will to perform the 'experiment' to confirm my results?? It would be especially good if someone did it who uses proper butter!! Or do I have to go out and buy some?

Tabby.

[Ralph]

THIS may help!

[1950Norm]

An American magazine held a competition, inviting its readers to submit new
scientific theories on ANY subject.
Below is the 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. Therefore, if a slice of toast
is strapped to a cat's back, buttered side up, and the animal is then
dropped, the two opposing forces will cause it to hover, spinning inches
above the ground. If enough toast-laden felines were used, they could form
the basis of a high-speed monorail system.

........and then this reply from one of the recipients

I've been thinking about this cat/toast business for a while. In the
buttered toast case, it's the butter that causes it to land buttered side
down - it doesn't have to be toast, the theory works equally well with
Jacob's crackers. So to save money you just miss out the toast - and butter
the cats. Also, should there be an imbalance between the effects of cat and
butter, there are other substances that have a stronger affinity for carpet.

Probability of carpet impact is determined by the following simple
formula:

p = s * t(t)/t(c)

where p is the probability of carpet impact s is the "stain" value of the
toast-covering substance - an indicator of the effectiveness of the toast
topping in permanently staining the carpet. Chicken Tikka Masala, for
example, has a very high s value, while the s value of water is zero.

.

[1950Norm]

t(c) and t(t) indicate the tone of the carpet and topping - the value
of being strongly related to the relationship between the colour of the
carpet and topping, as even chicken tikka masala won't cause a permanent
and obvious stain if the carpet is the same colour.

So it is obvious that the probability of carpet impact is maximised if
you use chicken tikka masala and a white carpet - in fact this combination
gives a p value of one, which is the same as the probability of a cat
landing on its feet.

Therefore a cat with chicken tikka masala on its back will be certain to
hover in mid air, while there could be problems with buttered toast as the
toast may fall off the cat, causing a terrible monorail crash resulting in
nauseating images of members of the royal family visiting accident victims
in hospital, and politicians saying it wouldn't have happened if their
party was in power as there would have been more investment in cat-toast
glue research.

Therefore it is in the interests not only of public safety but also
public sanity if the buttered toast on cats idea is scrapped, to be replaced
by a monorail powered by cats smeared with chicken tikka masala floating above
a rail made from white shag pile carpet.

[Aschenbach]

I got 6/ 10 times butter side down.

Even if the odds were 50/50 it's still more likely not to land exactly 5 times.

Another variable is the whether you drop it out of your hand or from a plate. The trajectory is different.

Can we discount the chance of it landing on its side? What if it's Garlic bread?

[Dom Tuk]

Not a lot of people know this but if you cut out the square piece of carpet where the buttered toast has landed (it usually leaves a mark) then some very bizarre unexplained phenomena takes place.

1. That square piece of hallowed carpet when dropped from a height always lands alternately as coloured side up then uncoloured side up. Never fails its always alternate

2. If you fling that square piece of carpet away it can boomerang back to you despite its square shape.

3. If the carpet is placed near potted plants, they will flower well during the summer.

4. Despite the butter stain, tests with high performance liquid chromatography shows no presence of butter on the bread.

[MargeB]

I did your experiment, and dropped the toast. I can't believe it's not butter side down.

[Hamish]

I dont have a carpert, toaster or butter in the office at the moment or I would try this....... You should repeat is some 50-100 times to make it statistically significant.....

One possible reason may be, the rough side of the toast (the unbuttered side) may create more turblence and therefore a decrease in pressure and so cause the slice to rotate a little in the air and therefore always land butter side down.......

[ondemania]

an idea that i've known is that it has something to do with the heigh from which the toast is dropped. toast falling from a usual table height or from someones hands has only enough time to turn over once and therefore landing butter side down (this assuming that it was butterside up to begin with)

[Tabby]

Yep, looks like you are right ondemania. Have you read the answer from Ralph above?

Tabby.