Timeline for Why do phones land face down?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 13, 2017 at 19:23 | comment | added | rackandboneman | Maybe just butter the battery side of the phone? | |
| Nov 12, 2017 at 21:20 | vote | accept | Möoz | ||
| Nov 10, 2017 at 23:08 | history | edited | KutuluMike | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Nov 10, 2017 at 4:02 | comment | added | Keith M | I want to add that Motorola really knows what their doing. I have one of their phones and I've dropped it on the screens several times and haven't had so much as a scratch on the screen :) | |
| Nov 10, 2017 at 1:23 | comment | added | Pieter Geerkens | Yes, I once wrote up the physics of "buttered toast", for a coworker. | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 23:14 | comment | added | Dawood ibn Kareem | Cool! Telecommunications with emergency breakfast for those rushed mornings! | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 23:12 | comment | added | Martin Beckett | @DawoodibnKareem or attach a buttered piece of toast to the back (butter side down) | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 19:35 | comment | added | Dawood ibn Kareem | So the moral is ... always hold your phone upside down? | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 19:14 | comment | added | WhatRoughBeast | But also keep in mind that Matthews says in the video that there is "a slight tendency" to land screen down, so you shouldn't place too much emphasis on the physics. | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 17:51 | comment | added | Evariste | This reminds me an old problem my physics teacher gave us to prepare us to the entrance exams for engineering school. For French readers, it can be found at mines-ponts.fr/pages/upload/getFile.php?FID=51 (source page: mines-ponts.fr/pages/upload/sujet/sujet.php, 1999, PSI, "Physique 1"). The conclusion is indeed: it's because of the initial conditions of the drop (of a buttered toast, not a phone, it was back in 1999!): mainly the height. As @MSalters also stated, the exercise ends by showing the problem would be the same for Martians. | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 14:37 | comment | added | DeltaIV | @TimE.Lord the fall height is similar for different persons: I don't have stats, but based on experience and a cursory look at these data I'd say that most adults in the world are between 1.6 and 1.9 m high. | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 13:55 | history | edited | KutuluMike | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Nov 9, 2017 at 9:44 | comment | added | MSalters | I have no idea anymore where I read the follow-up research, but I recall this being a universal property. Even on other planets with different gravities, bipedal humanoids would have their hands at heights inversely proportional to the gravity, which kept the average number of rotations at 0,5 independent of gravity. | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 6:54 | comment | added | pajonk | Worth noting that Robert Matthews was actually awarded an Ig Noble Prize for his research: improbable.com/2012/12/24/tumbling-toast-the-maths | |
| Nov 9, 2017 at 3:53 | comment | added | Keith McClary | @davidbak academia.edu/6794263/… | |
| Nov 8, 2017 at 22:31 | history | edited | KutuluMike | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Nov 8, 2017 at 22:31 | comment | added | Gallifreyan | It'd actually be interesting to investigate this independently of the fall height and path, i.e. depending only on the phone's own shape and mass distribution. | |
| Nov 8, 2017 at 22:29 | history | answered | KutuluMike | CC BY-SA 3.0 |