Scientist puts fresh spin on buttered toast riddle Scientist solves great buttered toast mystery Riddle of why toast falls on buttered side is solved

A scientist has finally explained the reason why toast falls butter- side down: if something can go wrong, it will.

Murphy's Law, the phenomenon seen in action every morning in countless homes, is built-in to the very design of the universe, according to scientist Robert Matthews, of Aston University.

"Toast falling off the breakfast table lands butter-side down because the universe is made that way," says Mr Matthews, author of Tumbling Toast, Murphy's Law and the Fundamental Constants.

The buttered toast example, popularly held to be proof of the existence of Murphy's - or Sod's - Law, had been dismissed by scientists as a simple 50:50 call, with people only remembering the bad outcomes.

But Mr Matthews' findings, drawn from complex mathematical calculations, show that toast has a natural bias towards butter-side down landings due to events that took place during the birth of the universe.

In simple terms, the spin rate of toast as it slides off a plate and is pulled by gravity downwards is too low to bring the buttered side uppermost again by the time it hits the floor.