Naked Science Forum

General Science => General Science => Topic started by: benep on 04/12/2006 21:25:38

Title: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: benep on 04/12/2006 21:25:38
is it true that butterd toast will land more often butter side down than on the plain side ? [?]
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: neilep on 04/12/2006 21:34:24
What a great question son !!

i suspect that perhaps that , although the butter is light, it still must have a pulling effect on the aerodynamics of the toast in flight !...still...let's hope a passing ' buttered toast ' expert steps in with the right answer.

Hugs the Son
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Carolyn on 05/12/2006 01:29:05
Excellent question, Ben.  I thought toast ALWAYS landed on the buttered side.  At least it has for me. [:)]
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 05/12/2006 04:08:02
I never ever thought about that, but i believe most of the times I recall, I had to clean up the butter mess from it falling face down as you said young man! Very interesting!
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: moonfire on 05/12/2006 04:55:18
Butter is embarrassed from falling so it does not want to show it's face...this is the most illogical answer you can possibly get Ben...LOL 
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 05/12/2006 05:08:05
MAY BE BUT IT IS GREAT!LOL LOL LOL LOL!!!
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: moonfire on 05/12/2006 05:47:07
;-) Hopefully the lad will get it...hehe  Or maybe the butter is hiding from the "jam" he has himself in?
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 05/12/2006 05:53:03
LOL LOL LOL Your so cute!! Love you Loretta!
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: moonfire on 05/12/2006 05:55:50
"cute" I am a big gal...how can that be cute?  LOL   Love ya too...but that is pretty mushy isn't it Glenda?
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 05/12/2006 06:03:47
LOretta Gibson You are a beautiful women that exubes Cute!!! Now we better stick to the butter topic for Ben!!
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: moonfire on 05/12/2006 06:10:15
Now why you got to call me by my almost full name here Glenda...?  Absolutely nothing like a little buttering up for sweet lil Ben...Afterall, King of the Forum's son should follow in his father's footsteps...let's see...Neilsy is at so many 1000's of posts...imagine if Ben stays at it from this age on how many posts he will achieve at his dad's age now? Hmmm, sounds like he might have the world's record....we could talk about different types of butter, salted or unsalted, I can't believe it's not butter,(brings up Fabio, if we do this one)Vegetable, and the list could go on and on all the way to goat butter...

Whatcha think?
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 05/12/2006 06:36:18
Fabio butter yummmm he was pretty cute, whatever happened to him?
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: moonfire on 05/12/2006 06:39:36
geez, I dunno...he was on some reality show for romance fantasy or something...maybe he retired please say he did???
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 05/12/2006 06:59:32
I havent seen him for years, I only seen him a couple times he was cute!
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: moonfire on 05/12/2006 07:00:32
Well, he has been making a few commercials...check it out on google...put fabio in...maybe he is finally making pretty babies...?
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 05/12/2006 07:35:51
Did he make any other kind? All babies are pretty!
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: moonfire on 05/12/2006 09:05:09
LOL  Not really...some babies are really ugly...
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: daveshorts on 05/12/2006 10:49:32
If you push a slice of toast off the side of a table it will start to rotate, if it falls off something the height of a table, the speeds and heights work out that it will probably rotate half way in that distance - landing top down.
[diagram=38_0]
So it isn't bad luck, just a consequence of the height of tables compared to how fast you normally knock bread slices off tables, - if you used a much higher table or pushed the bread off very slowly, it would rotate further before it hits the ground.
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: moonfire on 05/12/2006 13:19:37
I have never looked at toast like this before Dave...I am sure Ben will benefit from this information...
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: lightarrow on 05/12/2006 15:47:58
Dave has given the correct answer. I have read it in a scientifical magazine, probably Scientific American. Very nice drawing, Dave!
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 05/12/2006 16:06:53
Does this mean if table was higher the chances would be good to land either way! What about droping it from higher position with out it sliding off table top!
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: gecko on 07/12/2006 04:48:30
i have tested this, believe it or not. the toast was ruined as food so i played with it. when you directly "drop" it, like without any tossing action, or a table or any other force, it almost always lands butter side UP. this happens because when you butter toast, the knife leaves it concave. so, just like a leaf falling off a tree, it wouldnt fall liek this: /-\ because of air resistance. instead it stays like this \-/. unless you butter it in a more fancy knife free way.

HOWEVER. usually you dont drop it directly down. like the table diagram here, sometimes it has rotation and then might be likely to land the other way. but theres so many ways you could drop your toast. if you toss is like a frisbee it will land butter side up, i promise.
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Heliotrope on 07/12/2006 22:31:33
Toast will never land butter side down if you only put Marmite on it.
[:D]
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: elegantlywasted on 13/12/2006 18:33:17
For the mythbusters take on toast check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO1tHbE7uwQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO1tHbE7uwQ)
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: kalimna on 13/12/2006 22:12:25
I remember some years back when I read New Scientist that there was a flurry of letters regarding this phenomenon. And it was suggested that in order to produce a true perpetual motion machine, all you had to do was to strap a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat (butter side up) and as a consequence of the laws of motion (i.e. buttered toast lands butter side down, and that a cat always lands on its feet), if you pushed said cat off the table it would end up spinning forever!

A further piece of correspondence suggested this as a means by which interstellar travel may be possible - whenever starships are presented on TV/film, the engines always emit a low thrumming sound - you guessed it - thousands of cats purring away with toast on their back.......

Enjoy,
Adam
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: neilep on 13/12/2006 23:16:13
I remember some years back when I read New Scientist that there was a flurry of letters regarding this phenomenon. And it was suggested that in order to produce a true perpetual motion machine, all you had to do was to strap a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat (butter side up) and as a consequence of the laws of motion (i.e. buttered toast lands butter side down, and that a cat always lands on its feet), if you pushed said cat off the table it would end up spinning forever!

A further piece of correspondence suggested this as a means by which interstellar travel may be possible - whenever starships are presented on TV/film, the engines always emit a low thrumming sound - you guessed it - thousands of cats purring away with toast on their back.......

Enjoy,
Adam


As a firm believer in empirical study I took my daughters toy cat and stapled some buttered toast to it's back !!

....wooooo !!!.....That's one perpetual motion stuffed cat engine happening right there  !! ....

*note: If anyone sees a stuffed rotating cat zipping about ..please try and catch it...use a net !!*
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Karen W. on 14/12/2006 13:50:23
YOU are so silly!! We will watch out for that for sure!LOL LOL
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Monox D. I-Fly on 29/11/2018 03:41:35
I remember some years back when I read New Scientist that there was a flurry of letters regarding this phenomenon. And it was suggested that in order to produce a true perpetual motion machine, all you had to do was to strap a piece of buttered toast to the back of a cat (butter side up) and as a consequence of the laws of motion (i.e. buttered toast lands butter side down, and that a cat always lands on its feet), if you pushed said cat off the table it would end up spinning forever!
I assume Schrodinger has tried it and concluded that if the cat lands on its feet then in the other universe the cat lands on its back and vice-versa.
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: alancalverd on 29/11/2018 13:51:33
A case of sampling error leading to confirmation bias.

If toast lands  buttersideup, the dog will eat it and destroy the data. If it lands buttersidedown, you will have to pick it up and clean up the mess. So as far as dogs are concerned, it always lands buttersideup because unbuttered toast is of no interest and you can't turn it over if it is stuck to  the carpet and you don't have fingers.

Lots of useful statistics come from insurance claims. If you have an expensive Chinese silk carpet (as I'm sure most contributors to this forum do) it will be ruined by buttersidedown but not by butterside up, so there are no credible third-party statistics for buttersideup.
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Colin2B on 29/11/2018 14:50:57
Although toast always lands buttered side down, half of people butter it on the wrong side.
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: Petrochemicals on 29/11/2018 23:35:13
Who drove all the chicks away then ?
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: syhprum on 30/11/2018 00:44:36
I think bias creeps in because before it falls from the table it is almost certainly butter side up.
Title: Re: Will toast always land butter side down?!
Post by: yor_on on 01/01/2019 16:54:18
I had this vision of cats rotating, cat powered machines everywhere. Until I saw a mice.