Why is it that you always seem to drop your toast when you’re in a rush and running late for something important?
We know the feeling all too well - sleeping in past your alarm, scrambling out of bed with practically no time to do anything but grab a slice of toast, slather some butter on it and head out the door.
What happens more often than we’d care to admit is that in the midst of the morning rush, we often drop the toast and surprise surprise, it lands butter side down - great.
But you're not imagining it, your toast is far more likely to land butter side down - according to the numbers.
Researchers have claimed to find the definitive answer as to why toast always appears to fall on the most inconvenient side, and it’s to do with the height of the table that you’re sat at or the height of which you drop it.
You see, after a piece of toast begins its descent, it usually only has time to execute a half-somersault before it lands on the floor.
As the side which is buttered will naturally begin facing upwards, this will likely be the side to land flat on the floor.
In order to confirm this theory, food expert, Professor Chris Smith and his team at Manchester Met University dropped 100 slices of toast from a table which was two and a half feet high.
Unsurprisingly, in 81 per cent of cases, the butter side landed face down on the floor.
Following the experiment, Professor Smith concluded that if you want to ensure that any slice of toast lands butter side up rather than down, you should invest in a higher table of around eight feet high, thus allowing space for the toast to rotate a full 360 degrees.
The most contributing factor is the height of the table but the actual physics of a slice of toast also have an affect.
The air pockets in a slice of bread create drag as it falls through the air.
Buttering just one side of the bread alters the surface and therefore the levels of drag, and the way in which it rotates.
It is a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists and the public for nearly 200 years, it was even discussed as long ago as 1835, in the New York Monthly magazine.
So there you have it.
