Coin landing on Edge after fair toss

[PhanthomJay]

What is the probability of a fair coin landing on its edge after being tossed by an unbiased tosser? Is there a way to calculate this? Usually the coin will land either heads or tails, but once in awhile, even when not in the Twilight Zone, it will land on its edge...how much is 'once in a while'? No walls allowed which the coin might lean against...just an unbiased floor...

 

[chiro]

What is the probability of a fair coin landing on its edge after being tossed by an unbiased tosser? Is there a way to calculate this? Usually the coin will land either heads or tails, but once in awhile, even when not in the Twilight Zone, it will land on its edge...how much is 'once in a while'? No walls allowed which the coin might lean against...just an unbiased floor...

This is probably going to be overly complex, but I'll say it anyway.

I guess if you wanted to answer that, you would have to use a statistical way of calculating the forces required to end up in that situation given a set of input forces.

From that once you have an input distribution you could use a complicated evolving model like a stochastic process to formally describe the system you have in question.

I am not a physics major, but something akin to statistical mechanics would be your best bet.