h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

why does toast fall butter side down? Is it because of the weight of the spread? or simply the angle it falls causes it to flip?

Murphy's law!

I believe that one theory is that when it falls, the area with the butter on is changed aerodynamically' by being depressed by the knife, causing it to land butter side down.

If you can make head or tail (or Butter/non Butter) of it, this attempts to explain Murphy's Law.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rajm/toast.htm

I couldn't tell you which is correct though!

Personally I reckon it does it because it can, and it is semi-sentient knowing it will really ruin the start to your day, and totally you off!

beleive it or not, being the cool guy that I am, I tried it out with a coaster on a plate. It didnt seem to matter what side i put it on it always landed THAT side down. Which makes me think two things:

1. The average height that the toast falls means that it will spin 180% almost every time, regardless of the side it is on. Therefore the most effective way of stopping it would be putting it on the plate butter side down.

2. I should get out more....

I hope you didn't attempt to eat the object of your experiment!

There's a show in the US called 'Mythbusters'. They tested the toast butter side down and found a similar result for toast falling from table height - with or without butter the toast consistently turned mid-air and landed top side down. I think the results for the roof top drop were more evenly distributed.

The likelihood that toast will land butter-side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Can't remember who said it, though.

If you want a real challenge, try making cheese on toast in a pop-up toaster

I tried it once when I returned after a boozy night out. I put the toaster on it's side and slid the bread and cheese in. I then knelt down to keep an eye on it. The toast flew out at a great rate of knots, flinging gobbets of molten cheese around. One lava-like lump got me in the eye and my screaming woke everyone in the house. The cheese also melted onto the element in the toaster causing a large blue flash and a lot of smoke.

Let us know how you get on with your attempts

All you neede was one of these, SWL

http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xGS-toaster_bags~NS-1~linkin_id-8003891

The marvels of modern science Whatever next?

How about a device that automatically tilts the toaster, depending on the weight and potential viscosity/hilarious flamability of the toppings?

I found this nifty into about how they tested this on Mythbusters:

Buttered Toast: which side does it fall on?

There were two things being tested here:

If buttered toast falls off the table, does it prefer to land butter side down?
If buttered toast falls through the air, which side does it prefer to fall on?
First (Adam's) rig: Adam's rig most closely replicated a piece of toast falling off of a table top. Testing with a control sample of unbuttered test, the dominant behavior was for the toast to flip once and land top side down. They didn't need to do any more testing with actual buttered toast, as the rig clearly had a bias.

Second (Jamie's) rig: Jamie's rig tested whether or not, all things being equal, which side toast prefers to fall on. It shoots toast straight down.

With control sample testing, toast kept landing down. Once again they were statistically challenged, as they stopped after 10 samples. They determined that 3 ups and 7 downs was enough to show a clear down bias, and once again, if just one of those had been different, they it would have been 4 ups and 6 downs, which doesn't seem biased at all.

Third rig: based on Jamie's original design, but with way more over-engineering to be more automated, regular, and MythBuster-y. A conveyer belt toaster dropped the toast off onto a second conveyer belt that carried toast over to Adam, who marked the toast and loaded it into a dropper that was then released with a switch.

11 up and 13 down with control sample
12 up and 12 down with buttered sample
They determined this to be "less biased", so they then brought it to the roof of MythBusters HQ. From the top of the roof:

26 up and 22 down with control sample
29 up and 19 down with buttered sample
Jamie's theory was that for a lot of the buttered toast that landed butter side up, the buttered side was pressed in, forming a cup that affected the way the toast dropped. Regardless:

MythBusted