Toast lands jelly-side down You are preparing the breakfast table with coffee and a plate of toast. While setting the plate down, you accidently tilt it slightly so that the toast slides off and falls to the floor. It always seems to land jelly-side down. Newton’s laws and the laws of rotational dynamics are partly to blame. The toast leaves the plate with a small rotational velocity and continues to rotate as it falls. From the height of a typical table, this small rotation almost always causes the toast to make a one-half rotation and land jelly-side down. If it started at a higher initial position, like your elbow when standing, it might have a greater number of rotations and land jelly-side up; but if slightly tilted when landing it might bounce and flip over with jelly-side down. If it first lands jelly-side down, it does not bounce but remains stuck to the floor. Another interesting observation is that the toast lands jelly-side down only if it slides slowly off the plate. If it is shoved from the table with high velocity, it can land either way.
Why does toast have a better chance of landing jelly-side up if it is quickly shoved off the plate or table?
(a) It falls faster than if slowly slipping from the plate and does not have time to rotate.
(b) It moves in a parabolic path.
(c) The torque due to the gravitational force about the trailing edge of the toast as it leaves the plate has very little time to change the toast’s rotational momentum.
(d) The hand probably gives it an extra twist and the toast makes a full rotation instead of a half rotation.
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