Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[silvertop]

Check this out!  Found it on the Automata blog that I follow religiously

Hope this embedding things works?




If not here is the link ----  How-to-make-physics-toy-tippe-top-out in the The Automata Blog.

=============
Note from ta0:
To post a youtube video just put the address in a line by itself, no need to put code for the flash player object. If you want the address of the video to also appear (recommended) just repeated inside a sentence, like this:

[Larry D.]

Very Cool! 
Thanks Don! 

[the Earl of Whirl]

Oh my gosh!!!

That is awesome!!!!!

[ta0]

Duncan actually sells that "top". The tetrahedron is the first in the Tetra Tops series. I have a set of the originals before Duncan bought the rights from the "inventor."



I never though of a tetratop as a tippe top. There is some similarity in that it wants to spin with the center of mass as high as possible, but to me it is much less surprising. 

 Thanks for the video: the balls of my tetrahedron unglued after a fall and I have not been able to superglue them together (after seeing it, I guess I need much more glue, probably of the two component type).

[the Earl of Whirl]

Where in the heck did you find that, Jorge?  I never saw anything like that from Duncan before.  How long have you had it?  How old is it?

[ta0]

How long have you had it?  How old is it?

Ha, they have been selling them since 2001! I bet you have never gone to the Duncan site (www.yo-yo.com).

EDIT
Here is the Press Release: 2001 Duncan press release

The set I have I got directly from the inventor Kurt Przybilla and the packaging is pre-Duncan.

[the Earl of Whirl]

By the way Mr. ta0, did you know your next post will be #1800!

The word on the street is that Mr. Neff is very close to #1000!!!

[the Earl of Whirl]

Mr. ta0 has been very quiet lately. 

I wonder if Jorge is coming up with something special for his 1800th post?

[ta0]

I wonder if Jorge is coming up with something special for his 1800th post?

Yeah, for a few hours you stopped me from posting while I edited the video I took using Takeshi's head cam so I could post a nice 1800 post. But I decided it would be better to make a more complete video with other shots, so that is postponed. Anyway, 1800 is not 2000 

Just to make this post relevant to the thread: while a tippe top flips by 180 degrees, if I am not mistaken the tetrahedron Tetra Tops flips by just 70.53 degrees.

[Dick Stohr]

In the video it looks to me like the marble that is used to spin it is the marble that it turns on to.  Therefore it flips 180?

[topper777]

the marble vid was amazing to watch. i had no idea that it would end up spinning like a top.

[Watts' Tops]

Neat top made from Marbles.  I have a grand son in Mexico that would love to make one.

[ta0]

In the video it looks to me like the marble that is used to spin it is the marble that it turns on to.  Therefore it flips 180?

That is a good question. Just watching the video I couldn't be sure. So I glued back my tetrahedron (using lots of superglue, so my fingers now feel very weird) and tried it. I used the superglue marks to differentiate the balls. Well, the experimental result is that it does not end with the top ball on the bottom (at least if the finger spin is smooth and not bouncy). I also tried it with my octahedron and cubeoctahedron (looked up his "trading card" for the name) Tetra Tops (used a marker on the clear balls) and they don't flip 180 degrees either.

[ta0]

I am thinking that if the upper ball of the pyramid is smaller than the three balls of the base the top will have to flip 180. Maybe somebody on this board can assemble one with marbles and tell us the results 

[the Earl of Whirl]

How do you think gorilla glue would work on marbles?