….why the word “Lisp” contains the letter “S”?

….why God gave the turtle a Drag Coefficient of 0.03 (making it the most aerodynamic land animal in the world)?

….why we Park on “Driveways” and Drive on “Parkways”?

….why women’s langerie are described as a “Pair” of panties but there’s only ONE bra?

….why the word “Little” is twice a big as the word “Big”?

….why drive-up ATMs have brail instructions?

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If toast always lands buttered side down, and cats always land on their feet, ever wonder what will happen if you drop a cat with butterd toast tied to its back?

(This variation taken from http://www.begent.freeserve.co.uk/toast.htm.)

An American magazine held a competition, inviting its readers to submit new scientific theories on ANY subject.

Below is the winner on the Subject of Perpetual Motion

When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands buttered side down.

Therefore, if a slice of toast is strapped to a cat’s back, buttered side up, and the animal is then dropped, the two opposing forces will cause it to hover, spinning inches above the ground.

If enough toast-laden felines were used, they could form the basis of a high-speed monorail system.

…..and then this mail got this reply from one of the recipients:

I’ve been thinking about this cat/toast business for a while. In the buttered toast case, it’s the butter that causes it to land buttered side down – it doesn’t have to be toast, the theory works equally well with Jacob’s crackers. So to save money you just miss out the toast – and butter the cats.

Also, should there be an imbalance between the effects of cat and butter, there are other substances that have a stronger affinity for carpet.

Probability of carpet impact is determined by the following simple formula: p = s * t(t)/t? where p is the probability of carpet impact, s is the “stain” value of the toast-covering substance – an indicator of the effectiveness of the toast topping in permanently staining the carpet.

Chicken Tikka Masala, for example, has a very high s value, while the s value of water is zero.

t? and t(t) indicate the tone of the carpet and topping – the value of p being strongly related to the relationship between the colour of the carpet and topping, as even chicken tikka masala won’t cause a permanent and obvious stain if the carpet is the same colour.

So it is obvious that the probability of carpet impact is maximised if you use chicken tikka masala and a white carpet – in fact this combination gives a p value of one, which is the same as the probability of a cat landing on its feet.

Therefore a cat with chicken tikka masala on its back will be certain to hover in mid air, while there could be problems with buttered toast as the toast may fall off the cat, causing a terrible monorail crash resulting in nauseating images of members of the royal family visiting accident victims in hospital, and politicians saying it wouldn’t have happened if their party was in power as there would have been more investment in cat-toast glue research.

Therefore it is in the interests not only of public safety but also public sanity if the buttered toast on cats idea is scrapped, to be replaced by a monorail powered by cats smeared with chicken tikka masala floating above a rail made from white shag pile carpet

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http://www.cockeyed.com/science/toast/toast1.html

which does a study (very informal, not very scientific…) with buttered toast (20% survival rate on the whole loaf) and on toast with butter and another topping, such as jam, nutella or honey (with only a 5% survival rate on the whole loaf…). This study is complete with pictures of the whole process…

On the other hand, that site has a link to a page by Thiel College in Pennsylvania, which also does a study (more scientific, of course) on the It comes complete with two scientific models to predict the fall of the toast, depending on whether there is friction exerted on the toast or not, and a (small) video of the model in action. Who would have thought…

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Not a joke, but a gentleman actually did scientific research on whether toast landed buttered side down more often than not. After much experimentation he concluded that because of the factors involved: average height of a kitchen table, maximum/minimum/mean rotational possibilities of a piece of buttered toast etc., toast will indeed land more often buttered side down. He concluded that the majority of buttered toast was dropped off the edge of a kitchen table, and usually slid or was knocked off the edge. In doing so the leading edge, as it passed the edge of the table, was affected by gravity, drawing it down, and conversly raising the aft end. This inparted spin upon the buttered toast. The toast retained this spin as it continued over the edge and was entirely taken over by gravity. This spin was, in the majority of the cases, enough to cause the toast to complete one-half a rotation, but hardly ever enough to complete one whole rotation. Thus landing buttered side down. In fact, given the amount of rotational inertia in a piece of buttered toast the odds are severly skewed against it landing buttered side up. The addition of jelly or jam into the equation increased the amount of energy imparted into the spin, but at the same time increase it’s acceleration in free-fall, resulting in an even higher percentage of buttered/jammed-side down landings.

This tells you that some people have WAY to much time on their hands. (two in this case, him in performing the experiment, and me in actually reading the paper)

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I went along until the last sentence. Adding jam would not increase acceleration. Ignoring air resistance, all objects regardless of mass, density, shape, etc. fall at the same rate of acceleration.

As The Bard once coined, “Ah, there’s the rub.” You can’t ignore air resistance. And adding the jam increases the mass without significantly increasing the cross-section (area affected by the resistance of fluid medium[in this case, air]). Given two identical boxes (1mx1mx1m, for arguments sake), one with the heavier internal load will overcome air resistance faster than the lighter of the two. More mass in the same cross-section, against wind resistance (or any fluid medium) results in an increase in accelleration.

So, said cardboard box filled with lead (say 500 lbs) will hit the ground faster than an identical box filled with feathers (say, ~1.5 lbs) when dropped from any appreciable altitude.

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Two sites studying the matter, as explained in another post to this general thread…

http://www.cockeyed.com/science/toast/toast1.html

and

http://www.thiel.edu/academics/physics/projects/toast/default.htm

Without clicking on the links yet, can you tell who had the most fun looking into the matter by the name of the link?

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