Random Facts that you find interesting

[Slomo]

My post was not about bread falling from a roof, but bread falling from a breakfast table. The researchers also showed that it is not the butter that makes the bread fall butter side down.
They actually won an Ig Nobel prize

You mis understand, I agree with the from the table results. It was the from the air part that isn't quite 50-50. I'll have to revisit that old episode though, I may be remembering it incorrectly.

 

[tiny]

Closer to home:

When you -accidentally- drop your buttered slice of bread from the table, there is an 81% chance that it will land with the buttered side down. This is actually scientifically proven. It has to do with the height of the table. The slice can only make a half rotation when it is falling to the floor. When you toss the bread in the air the chances are just 50-50.

If you hate to clean up the mess every morning, the best thing to do is to invest in a higher table, approx 8 ft high.

Ha ha -- I remember reading about that IgNobel award a few years back.

Then someone came up with a paradoxical thought experiment that blew my mind. It's a fact of life (sod's law) that toast always lands butter-side down. And a known fact that cats always land on their feet. This gave rise to the first genuine perpetual-motion machine, comprising of a cat, with a slice of buttered toast strapped to its back.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/27716/buttered-cat-paradox

Essentially a mechanical superposition is created where the cat can neither fall on its back, nor the toast land butter-side down. It becomes impossible for the cat/toast machine to fall, resulting in a perpetual motion as the object tries to correct itself.

A variation of the experiment is described here:

[video=youtube;wvRzWYCZ2e0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvRzWYCZ2e0[/video]

And that, my friends, is science. :2thumbsup:

 

[ade]

Isn't the cat-toast machine one of Jimmy Carr's jokes [from when the butter-side down experiments were first revealed]?

 

[Makubird]

Then someone came up with a paradoxical thought experiment that blew my mind. It's a fact of life (sod's law) that toast always lands butter-side down. And a known fact that cats always land on their feet. This gave rise to the first genuine perpetual-motion machine, comprising of a cat, with a slice of buttered toast strapped to its back.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/27716...ed-cat-paradox

Essentially a mechanical superposition is created where the cat can neither fall on its back, nor the toast land butter-side down. It becomes impossible for the cat/toast machine to fall, resulting in a perpetual motion as the object tries to correct itself.

When you -accidentally- drop your buttered slice of bread from the table, there is an 81% chance that it will land with the buttered side down. This is actually scientifically proven. It has to do with the height of the table.

It would be interesting to test whether it matters if you push the cat-with-buttered-toast from the table or from the roof :smile1:

Or what happens if you use toast with butter on one side and jelly on the other...