Torquing Toilet Paper Rollers

Today, I'd like to talk about something that has split marriages, divided the country, and who knows, possibly resulted in international incidents:

Is there a right way or a wrong way to hang the toilet paper on the roller?

If you have a toilet paper roller like this...

...then the answer is YES.

Despite what you think, it has nothing to do with how the pattern is printed on the paper.  It has to do with physics.

Ever been sitting taking care of all things natural when you reach for the toilet paper and the whole roll goes shooting across the floor, leaving you seated on the throne with long white streamer as the whole roll unrolls itself?

Well, there's a solution to that:  the toilet paper was put on wrong.  

In physics, there's a force that is call "torque".  Torque is the likelihood that something will want to turn when force is applied.  So, if you push down or pull, does the object turn?  

If you've ever been to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, you'll probably have done this experiment:

While seated on a rotating chair, you hold a bike wheel and spin it.  If you tilt the wheel to the right, you spin around in a circle.  If you tilt the wheel to the left, you're brought to a halt. 

This is torque.

Interesting as it may seem, torque is a right-handed force, which is why you spin when you hold the bike wheel to the right. When you turn the wheel to the left, the torque is forced to an axis that cannot turn, so you can't spin in the chair, but if your chair was somehow suspended in the air horizontally, you would spin.

Well, you can apply this advanced knowledge of torque to your toilet paper problem.

If you have a toilet paper roller like the one above and you want to have the pretty printing on the top of the toilet paper, then you need to install the roller either on the left side of the toilet with the opening pointing to the toilet, OR on the right side of the toilet with the opening pointing away from the toilet.

If you don't have a drill handy when you sit down for your constitutional, take a look at where the toilet paper is.

If it's on the left side of the toilet with the opening pointing away from the toilet, then you need to put the toilet paper on upside down to keep it on the roller when it spins.  If the opening is pointing to the back, then the toilet paper needs to be with the printing on the top to keep the paper on the roller.

The opposite is true if the toilet paper is on the right:

If the opening is away from the toilet, then the printing should be on top.

If the opening is towards the toilet, then the roll needs to feed from the bottom (upside down).

If you don't believe me, try it out the next time you're having a length sit.

Who would have thought physics would be so down to Earth?