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A Toast to Murphy's Law

ISEF · 2016

Sweenie, Kamille, Singley, Merritt

Overview

The purpose of this experiment is to determine the correct height of a dining room table that would prevent buttered toast from falling buttered-side down and soiling a perfectly good carpet. After toasting some bread and pushing it off tables of variable heights, an equation was created using a computer program, and the height of a table wherein toast could rotate fully about the x axis was determined. For a total of 180 separate toast drops from heights of 72.0 to 91.2 centimeters, the percentage of butter-side up landings was 51.3%. However, after it was found that a piece of toast must remain in the air for 0.5788 seconds before reaching the ground, it was concluded that the optimum height for a dining room table is approximately 164.4 centimeters tall.

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Source: Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair

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