Have you ever noticed that when you drop a piece of toast it tends to land buttered-side down? Try this experiment to see if you can land your toast buttered-side up!

You will need:
- A piece of buttered toast (not to be eaten afterwards!)
- A table
- A cardboard box

What to do:
Try dropping the toast from different heights such as a cardboard box, table, or shelf. Drop the toast four times from each height and record your results. What do you find?

What’s happening?
The toast rotates, or spins, as it falls. How far it rotates depends on the height from which you drop it. From a table, the toast usually only has time to do a half-turn (180 degrees) before it hits the floor, often landing buttered-side-down – but not every time.

When the toast is dropped from a higher level, you may find it has more time to spin and so lands buttered-side-up more often.

Before you tried this experiment, you may have believed toast “always” landed buttered-side-down. Psychologists think we’re more likely to remember annoying things, like toast landing buttered-side-down, or your sister stealing your clothes. So it probably seemed like it happened more often than it actually did.