Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down: The Scientific Reasons Everything Goes Wrong (The Science of Murphy's Law)

by Richard Robinson

Book Overview

Fun, quirky popular science explaining the real reasons why everything always goes wrong - the various truths behind Murphy's Law. The law of laws, Murphy's Law, sits above all others like an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 1435158687
• ISBN13: 9781435158689
• Release Date: January 2015
• Publisher: Constable & Robinson
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant Book

The answer is actually found in page 208. The author doesn't tell you that it's all in your mind. Statistically, it only has a 50% chance of landing butter side down. But the problem is, you serve your toast butter side up on the plate. When it slips, it only has the distance to rotate half a turn before hitting the floor. How do you make the toast land butter side up. Robinson recommends that we wear stilts so that the toast can make a full rotation. I say we serve our toasts butter side down. This is a funny book that explains to cynics and "naive scientists" why the checkout lines they are in are always the slowest, why the car breaks down when they're in a hurry ... What is the science behind Murphy's Law? Robinson explains it beautifully in this book. The first few chapters talk about perceptions and optical illusions and other ways by which the mind can play tricks with us. Our memories can also be selective. When something strikes us as coincidentally unpleasant, the naive scientist in us sees it as a phenomenon. Robinson argues that these phenomena are mostly psychological and only partly science. Which part? In the final chapters, Robinson offers purely scientific explanations for Murphy's law in action. Nothing to do with perceptions and psychology. An interesting, entertaining, brain-teasing read.

A popular tour of cognitive psychology

Richard Robinson explains, how the Murphy's Laws naturally follow from the way our brain processes information. The focus of the book is not on Murphy's Laws as such; they merely provide a setting for a popular tour of cognitive psychology. The book is entertaining and reasonably educational. Its main drawback, in my view, is that it is a bit too popular. Robinson does a great job illustrating cognitive phenomena with simple and easy-to-understand examples, but he never spends much time on any single one. He also doesn't discuss, how exactly we know about the function of different parts of the brain - something that could have been done quite easily without complicating the book. Still, this was an interesting book to read, and I now understand why my computer always crashes just before I hit that "send" button :)

The Psychology of Murphy's Laws

Well-written and witty, this book makes it clear that all of Murphy's Laws exist mainly because of how the human brain works - psychology. With many entertaining and useful cartoons and prose that is both informative as well as peppered with the odd bit of well-placed humor, this book will entertain as much as inform. This is a quick read that all those who feel that they have been consistently plagued by Murphy's Laws cannot afford to miss.