Does Toast Always Fall Butter Side Down?

Everyone, and especially those with kids, has probably pondered the following question:  Does toast always fall butter side down?  We've all likely experienced this at some point in our life, and if you have kids, it's quite possible that you experience this every day.  It doesn't have to be buttered toast.  It could be a slice of pizza falling cheese side down, a container of yogurt falling open side down, or even a plate of spaghetti falling spaghetti side down.  It never seems to fail that the wrong side of the "whatever" hits the ground first.

I had my own ideas involving center of mass and rotation and it turns out I was correct, but I did some web research to verify my hypothesis.  It all depends on how the toast drops.  If you're holding the toast horizontal in both hands with the butter side up and release both hands at the same time, the toast will fall butter side up, thus making it still edible (3 second rule...which is not true, but fun to use anyway!).   Toast, however, usually isn't dropped in this way.

Most of the time a piece of toast is dropped one one edge. Think about a piece of toast slipping off the counter/table top.  When the first half of the toast goes over the edge it starts to fall due to the force of gravity.  Since one half of the toast starts to fall before the other, the toast begins to rotate through the air about the toast's center of mass.  Unfortunately for the toast eater, the toast strikes the ground less than 1/2 a second later.  Therefore, the toast doesn't have time to make one complete rotation and land butter side up.  It's still in the first half of its rotation, so it usually lands butter side down.  

One way to avoid your toast landing butter side down is to always face the butter side of the toast downward on your plate.  Thus when it falls off, the butter side is facing up when it hits the ground!  :-)

In the end, you're not full of bad luck.  There's a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation as to why toast always seems to land butter side down.