you invite your friends over to watch an NBA basketball playoff game on TV
there are plenty of sodas in the refrigerator the popcorn is popping
0:17and you are all set to watch the big game
0:20you turn on the said and all you get is a fuzzy image on the screen
0:25is this plain bad luck or is it murphy's law at work
0:30murphy's law states if anything can go wrong
0:34it will similar situations occur all the time
0:38when you're in a hurry to open the door and you try several key is on the
0:43keyring
0:43the last one you try is usually the one that works
0:47when you get into a line at the supermarket you find you've chosen the
0:51slowest one
0:53and it just doesn't move bad luck
0:56or coincidence according to British physicist
1:00robert matthews it's neither one nor the other he explains that are selective
1:05memory
1:06tends to remember the bad episodes more readily than the things that usually
1:10work out
1:11and the law of probability is more against us
1:15then in our favor for example in the supermarket with five cashiers
1:21the chances of getting a fast lane are 20 percent
1:24and eighty percent for a slow lane
1:28Matthews became a popular scientist
1:31when he proved that a piece of toast doesn't necessarily fall on the floor
1:36on the buttered side BBC television gathered 300 people
1:41to throw pieces a buttered toast up in the air
1:44and observe on which side they fell half
1:48fell on the buttered side and half didn't now here's a tricky question for
1:53doctor Matthews
1:54it's a known fact that cats always fall on their forelegs
1:59what happens if you tie a piece a buttered toast on a cat's back
2:03and dropped them from a balcony will the cat land on all fours
2:08or will the toast land on the buttered side
2:11I E sincerely hope the BBC doesn't try this experiment
2:15just remember that you cannot blame murphy's law for
2:19everything that goes wrong if the hot water runs out while you're having a
2:24shower
2:24it's probably because the burner needs to be fixed
2:28if your car breaks down on the way to a job interview
2:32it's probably because you didn't have the vehicle serviced
2:36or repaired murphy's law
2:41Captain Edward murphy was an engineer at Edwards Air Force Base in the US
2:46in 1949 he was working on the project
2:50a machine that measured the heartbeat and breathing of pilots
2:54but something was malfunctioning in the equipment due to human error
2:58Murphy blamed the lab technician and said
3:02if there is any way to do it wrong he will
3:05one small failure can bring a whole project crashing down
3:10in practice it was a good principle love safety engineering
3:14and it became popular in all areas to explain the failures
3:19up every day things