While Julia and I were chatting in my driveway one evening, we came upon a discussion of an old wives' tale - If dropped, a buttered slice of bread will always land buttered side down. "Oh, is that so?" we thought. I also posed the question that if you attach the buttered slice of bread to a cat's back, how would it land under the circumstances? After all, cats always land on their feet, right? Unfortunately, we had no cats volunteer to take the leap from my front porch roof, but from my freezer emerged a fearless slice of bread. [To indulge yourself in the cat and buttered bread phenomenon, check out these links - Fun With Buttered Bread and Cats (inactive) and Cats and Buttered Bread: Rotational Dynamics and the Anti-Gravity Machine (inactive) (Quicktime video of a falling cat)]
Objective To determine how a buttered piece of bread will land if dropped from relatively low altitude.
Equipment one slice of bread, margarine or butter (or even Crisco if you get really desperate), ledge from which the bread can be dropped, "peppery" shingles
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Figures 1 and 2 - Buttered bread and droppers [normal pose (Fig. 1) and pimped-out pose (Fig. 2)]
Procedure 1. (Since Beese's family is weird and keeps their bread in the freezer...) Remove the slice of bread from the freezer, 2. Place bread on plate and defrost it in the microwave for approximately 30 seconds, 3. Place bread back into freezer for cool down, 4. Apply thin layer of margarine to one face of the bread, 5. Climb to ledge that is approximately 15 feet above the ground, 6. Don't fall off!, 7. Hold the bread over ledge, making it perpendicular to the ground (thus allowing no preference to either side of the bread), 8. Drop (don't throw!) the bread and allow gravity to take charge, 9. Record how bread lands: buttered side up or buttered side down, 10. Aim towards dropper and throw the slice of bread back onto the roof or ledge, 11. Retrieve bread from the far reaches of the porch roof if the throw was crappy, 12. Repeat steps six to eleven 19 more times (or until the slice of bread is completely demolished from impacts upon the ground and roof).
On to the observations --> - including figures
Updated: 12-28-2000