I had fun over the weekend experimenting with my tippe top, a specially shaped top that flips itself over. Turns out the key to the flipping is friction: the more friction, the faster the top will flip, as the video shows.
mechanics
All posts tagged mechanics
As an extra credit project, I asked the students from my mechanics class to film demonstrations of physical systems we discussed in class. The videos turned out very nice, so I’ve shared some of them below.
Spent all day today making a short video illustrating free precession of a disk. I’ve embedded the video below, and I’ve posted the equations in the video here. Earth also exhibits free precession, called Chandler wobble.