The “buttered toast problem”
You’ve probably heard this one – I had. Why does toast always land butter side down? Physicist Robert Matthews analyzed this in the Nineties and it was published in the European Journal of Physics in 1995.
Toast sits on your plate butter up
When it falls, the table edge acts as a pivot, flipping it
It rotates as it falls (thanks gravity!)
From the height of the typical table, it has enough room to do a 180
There. Butter side down.
If the table were taller, it would have time to spin all the way around and it’s anyone’s guess which side would be up. Also, if the toast is tiny (like canapés) the math doesn’t work.
And yes, Matthews also formulated the question, “But what if the buttered toast was strapped to the back of a cat?” And yes, he also won the Ig Nobel Prize for it.
March 11, 2026 — 5:30 pm
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