Murphy's law

Australia, 2000

Film
Please note

Sorry, we don't have images or video for this item.

Episode number 4 of Series “Great moments in science: presented by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki”.
If there are two or more ways to do something and if one of those results in catastrophe, then someone will do it that way, Edward A. Murphy Jr. In 1949 the US Airforce had a project called MX984 which measured G forces and in which Edward A. Murphy was working. You can find out what went wrong and how inadvertently this famous law came about. With the use of several animation techniques, Karl Kruszelnicki explains this, as well as why a falling piece of toast will always land on the floor - buttered side down.

Content notification

Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.

Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.

How to watch

This work has not been digitised and is currently unavailable to view online. It may be possible for approved reseachers to view onsite at ACMI.

Learn more about accessing our collection

Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

director

Andrew Horne

producer

Deborah Szapiro

production company

Freerange Animation

Karl Kruszelnicki

Duration

00:05:00:00

Production places
Australia
Production dates
2000

Appears in

Great moments in science: presented by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

Group of items

Great moments in science: presented by Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

Explore

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

315823

Language

English

Subject categories

Animation

Mathematics, Science & Technology → Force and energy

Mathematics, Science & Technology → Science

Mathematics, Science & Technology → Scientists

Short films

Short films → Short films - Australia

Sound/audio

Sound

Colour

Colour

Holdings

VHS; Access Print (Section 1)

Please note: this archive is an ongoing body of work. Sometimes the credit information (director, year etc) isn’t available so these fields may be left blank; we are progressively filling these in with further research.

Cite this work on Wikipedia

If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/92530--murphys-law/ |title=Murphy's law |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=22 November 2024 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}