iTopSpin

I find this ad to be suitable to my tastes.

If only I had spare money to get one of these. (Hmmm... then I could interface it with a RC helicopter and have aerial to ground battles... :-X)

Personally, I have always been fond of the Ford Centurion when describing an automobile "thing."

I agree that the problem is two-fold. Each side has its own part to the problem as I think ta0 pointed out.

Part one is the ease with which as string can grip the neck of the tip to force the the string to not see more than one location on the tip. Think of this as trying to start riding a bicycle ...

Unfortunately ta0, you did not put the

"Any mother who doesn't understand that 'i before e except after c' should not sell her children's beyblades on ebay"

option into the poll.

ta0 wrote:
Super cool top! But, is the law of conservation of momentum violated?

My guess is no.

Those are awesome! Being a giant pocket billiards junkie I couldn't imagine a better top.

ta0 wrote: Fireworks are not allowed where I live, but now I really want to put a sparkler on a top and regen with it.

That's merely a suggestion, ta0.

So JohnM informed me that tops appear in this years episode of Treehouse of Horrors XXI on the Simpsons. I did some YouTube searching and found a preview of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3dX9-J1HMw&feature=channel

It's right near the beginning of this video.

I'm not sure which I less proud: not having one of those tops or that I know who that character is.

King Arthur's is the only one I've been to. I think there's one not far from there called Boardwalk. I think it's more of a game store than toy shop. There's also several hobby shops, but the ones I know are gears towards R/C toys and table top gaming.

Don't worry all your information is still there, waiting for you to come back.

I bought a similar top from Brown County State Park in Indiana. It came with the same booklet.

The reverse spin reminds me of the demo you showed, ta0, with inducing spin with the magnets in the top. The spin is opposite in that demo too. It clearly shows that the earth has to exert a force on the top such that the spin changes.

Tippy-tops are great examples of stable and meta-stable states ...

I may have to look back at my old files, but I have had papers about the physics involved in tippy-tops. A popular calculation is the energy minimization as a function of stem angle. Surprisingly, there are also studies of fractal dimensions in tippy-tops!

"Snookie want smoosh smoosh!"