[Karen W.]

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!

[gecko]

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.

[Heliotrope]

Toast will never land butter side down if you only put Marmite on it.
[]

[elegantlywasted]

For the mythbusters take on toast check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO1tHbE7uwQ

[kalimna]

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

[neilep]

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 !!*

[Karen W.]

YOU are so silly!! We will watch out for that for sure!LOL LOL

[Monox D. I-Fly]

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.

[alancalverd]

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.

[Colin2B]

Although toast always lands buttered side down, half of people butter it on the wrong side.

[Petrochemicals]

Who drove all the chicks away then ?

[syhprum]

I think bias creeps in because before it falls from the table it is almost certainly butter side up.

[yor_on]

I had this vision of cats rotating, cat powered machines everywhere. Until I saw a mice.