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Experiments Based on Commonly Held but Seldom Tested Beliefs
Part II. Unequal Gravitational Attraction Based on Jam and Random Carpet Samples.

It is a commonly held belief that the probability that a piece of jelly toast will land jelly side down is proportional to the expense of the carpet on the dining room floor. I decided to test this theory using old carpet samples from a carpet store, common white bread, and grape jelly. To eliminate variables, I used the same piece of toast for the entire experiment, adding jelly to the toast after each time it fell face down. I tried to maintain a uniform jelly thickness of approximately 3 millimeters above the surface of the bread throughout the experiment. I dropped the toast from the height of five feet, allowing it to roll off of my finger tips just as I was about to take a bite, thus accurately simulating the situation of an accidental dropping. I dropped the toast 50 times on each piece of carpet before my roommate came home. As she could not understand the cause of sacrificing a jar of her grape jelly in the name of science, I had to stop the experiment at that point or face a budget crisis. Experimental data is shown in the table below:

Obviously the toast has a stronger tendency to fall face down on some of the carpets, but there is no correlation to price evident in the data! To attempt to discover the pattern I arranged the data according to carpet thickness:

carpet age:

carpet thickness:

and finally, carpet color:

At this point, I realized that it is not the carpet price, but how much the color of the jelly clashes with the carpet that matters. The most expensive carpet sample tested was a deep purple-blue, which received a straight 50% of jelly side down landings. The white and yellow carpets had the highest percentages of jelly side down landings, the green and brown less, and the cheap mixed veggie colored carpet had almost 50% again. What we can conclude from this is that it doesn't matter so much the cost of the carpet that was ruined, but that if the carpet is ruined it has to be taken out and replaced regardless of its price. Toast has no motivation to land face down on expensive carpet if that carpet will not be ruined in the process.

In light of this, homemakers are advised to coordinate their carpet colors with the sorts of things that might ruin them. If you use a lot of strawberry jam, a red or orange kitchen floor might be safest. It is hypothesized that this can be applied to other areas of home maintenance. I would suggest grey carpets for rooms with fireplaces, brown carpets near the doors if your home is frequented by small children who like to play outside, and the ever popular mixed veggie institutional type carpet for the kitchen as it would survive the assault of a large lasagna casserole. Without the effect of color contrast to increase the probability of a spill, ordinary probability dictates that only 50% of the time will your lasagna fall upside down, and even when it does you will not have to replace your carpet.

Dr. Iva P. Aitchdee is the leading scientist at the Shipley Center for Immaterial Science and president of the Hoffman Foundation for Hypothetical Research.