Does Bread Land Butter Side Down - Part 1 Science Experiments Series Video 1 (YouTube)
Does Bread Land Butter Side Down?
Why does bread land butter side down? People have asked that question for over 100 years.
News Paper in Norwalk Ohio 1841:
I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side!
What This Is About:
Experiments will be conducted to see if bread and toast lands butter side down.
What is Needed:
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•Bread
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•Butter / Margarine
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•Peanut Butter
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•Jelly
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•Butter knife or spreader (Use a rubber spatula spreader for zero tolerance schools)
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•Balloons
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•Curled paper
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•Measuring tape
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•Marker
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•Toaster
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•Mop for cleanup.
For these experiments sweet cream butter is referred to as “butter” and peanut butter is referred to as “peanut butter”.
With any experiment, please use common sense and good judgment. Kids, get your parent’s permission before making a mess.
Note: Teachers make sure that your students do not have any food allergies to peanut butter, latex balloons or any other substance used in these experiments.
Background Of The Science Experiments:
Experiments were done and a video was created. The data from the experiments pointed that that bread is more likely to fall butter side down in several situations.
Before the video’s launch, the video was redone and experiments were added, after it was learned that MythBusters performed similar experiments in their television show titled “Is Yawning Contagious” Episode 28 Season 3. The section is titled “Does Toast Really Fall Butter Side Down?”
The MythBuster’s experiments included testing if buttered toast landed butter side down. The MythBusters placed butter on hot toast and dropped the toast vertically from the top of a building. Their data showed that the toast was more likely to land butter side up.
SchoolFreeware’s data showed that bread was more likely to land butter side down. Thus the reason for more and different experiments to gather more data and come to an appropriate conclusion.
Luckily, the Scientific Method allows for retesting and making more experiments:
The Scientific Method:
1. Define the question
2. Gather information and resources
3. Form a hypothesis
4. Perform experiment - collect data
5. Analyze data
6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a
starting point for new hypothesis
7. Publish results
8. Retest
Gathering Information Then Forming a Hypothesis
The idea that bread will land butter side down seems simple enough. When an object falls there are a couple of forces that affect the object. One is gravity and the other is air resistance.
The force of the falling object is the object’s mass multiplied by acceleration or F = ma.
F = ma
Since the acceleration is due to gravity, the formula may be written as:
F = mg
Learning From Other Experiments:
A balloon and a penny will be used as an example. As an object falls, it must push the air out of its way. The balloon has a large surface area compared to the penny. Newton’s First Law states that an object at rest will want to stay at rest. Therefore, the air does not want to move. So, the balloon has to push more air, that does not want to move, out of the way. The penny has more mass than the balloon. Therefore, the force of the penny is greater than the balloon. This allows the penny to move the air more easily and having less air to move, the penny, will fall to the ground quicker than the balloon.
If the penny is taped to top of the balloon. When dropped, the top of the balloon will have more mass than the bottom. The top of the balloon will be “top heavy” and want to fall faster than the bottom half. The balloon will roll over and the balloon will drop penny side down.
This example will be modified. The penny will be replaced by a slice of butter. The butter has more mass than the balloon and less surface area. Like the penny, the butter will fall to the ground faster than the balloon. If butter was applied to the top of the balloon, the balloon should turn over and fall butter side down.
The Buttered Balloon Experiment:
Butter was applied to the top of the balloon and the ballon was dropped from a height of about 4 ft.
Next, the balloon with peanut butter was dropped from the same height .
The experiment was done for a total of 10 times each.
As expected, the buttered balloon turns over and lands butter side down.
Based upon the data and information, our hypothesis, for the buttered bread experiments, is that buttered bread lands butter side down.
Page 2 - Bread Experiments Data, Conclusion, and Links