What are the most important open questions in classical physics?

[andresB]

As the tittle say. I've been out of touch with many branch of non-quantum non-relativistic physics and I would like to know what people that work in these areas would say are the most important or interesting current trents of research in classical physics.

 

[mitochan]

Though I myself do not work in physics area I find complex systems interesting.

 

[HallsofIvy]

Why does the toast always fall jelly side down?

 

[Ibix]

Why does the toast always fall jelly side down?

I thought somebody had done some work on that. The conclusion, as I recall, was that in a higher gravitational field we'd be shorter (due to needing to pump blood to our heads) by exactly the same fraction as the increase in the gravitational couple and hence spin rate imparted to dropped toast. So they proposed that toast falling butter side down was likely a universal constant.

 

[robphy]

Why does the toast always fall jelly side down?

I thought somebody had done some work on that. The conclusion, as I recall, was that in a higher gravitational field we'd be shorter (due to needing to pump blood to our heads) by exactly the same fraction as the increase in the gravitational couple and hence spin rate imparted to dropped toast. So they proposed that toast falling butter side down was likely a universal constant.

Pleasantly surprised to find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_toast_phenomenon.
Among the references:

Bacon (2001). "A closer look at tumbling toast". American Journal of Physics. 69: 38–43.
https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1289213
https://space.umd.edu/dch/p405s04/AJP00038.pdf

R A J Matthews (1995) "Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the fundamental constants". Eur. J. Phys. 16 172
https://doi.org/10.1088/0143-0807/16/4/005

 

[andresB]

Pleasantly surprised to find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_toast_phenomenon.
Bacon (2001). "A closer look at tumbling toast". American Journal of Physics. 69: 38–43.

buttered toast and bacon? That has to be a delicious reading.

 

[hilbert2]

Turbulence is always interesting. Probably ergodic hypothesis too.