History

The Law of Laws, Murphy's Law, is always there. After a long day's work, Murphy is always there to delay you and infuriate you.

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

Like all laws, once uttered it will always happen. The Law closes in on all sides. The more you think about it, the more you realise its vicelike grip on the planet. It's unavoidable. You can't put your butter on the other side of the toast.

The Law was originally discovered by a sergeant at Edward's Air Force Base, California. Rocket-sled experiments were done by the United States Air Force in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981). One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts  of the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount. Of course, somebody managed to install all 16 the wrong way around. It was then that Edward A. Murphy, Jr made his epic pronouncement: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

Murphy's law spread quickly. People began to notice that buses did indeed come in threes, toast did land butter side down, their queue was always the slowest, and urgently needed objects would become invisible. When a body is immersed in water, the doorbell rings. It happens to all of us. But, is there a scientific explanation to Murphy's law? For some examples of the Law, there is a scientific reason for bad luck.