The Results!
The book landed face down!
Wonder why? So
did we!
A reader claimed that their book
initially with its front cover up on
the table almost always landed face down.
He wondered if this had any
bearing on the buttered-toast phenomenon.
We wondered if the book was as
likely to land face up as it did face
down and that the reader hadn't thrown his book off the table enough
times to prove his theory correct.
After throwing our physics book
off the table many times we found that
the behavior of the falling book was far from random.
The final state of the book is
dictated by its rate of spin, which is typically too low for the book
to
complete a revolution and land face
up. The torque induced by gravity as the book goes
over the edge
simply does not lead to
sufficiently fast spin rate.
Much like this book the toast
would land butter-side
down if the tables
they fell from were much taller,
but alas, tables are the height they
are because
they must be convienent
for human beings.
What's next? Murphy's Law of Queues