“There is a long tradition of physicists fooling around with tops,” Brecher says. ![]() The phenomenon was first investigated in the 19th century by Lord Kelvin. While still not fully understood, the transition comes from friction between the top and the underlying platform that exerts an upward force on the top’s center of mass. That Kickstarter drive was for Brecher’s PhiTOP, an egg-shaped, metallic top that when spun from a horizontal position will suddenly stand erect and start rotating on one of its narrow ends. They started a small funding drive through the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and within three days had enough seed money to start a top-making enterprise called Sirius Enigmas. “While I was recovering, my daughter Karen suggested I do something with all my classroom demonstration stuff,” he says. Brecher has long used tops in classroom demonstrations, but it wasn’t until he was rendered immobile by knee surgery in 2015 that he decided to start making his own. Brecher presented his latest top-a one-way spinning device called a rattleback top-at the recent 2021 Bridges conference, a meeting on math-inspired art (see Physics Abounds at Conference on Math and Art).īrecher’s interest in spinning tops stems from his work on understanding the spinning motion of neutron stars-he was one of the first to show that they wobble, or precess. ![]() For the last six years, the retired astrophysicist from Boston University has been optimizing the design of spinning tops so that they pirouette for longer, something he does by incorporating mathematical constants into their dimensions. But for Kenneth Brecher, tops are more than toys: They are a way to demonstrate physics and math in action. The spinning top is a classic childhood toy, with its twirls and wobbles providing hours of entertainment. Karen Brecher When spun clockwise, this spinning top designed by Kenneth Brecher twirls briefly before wobbling and then reversing its spinning direction.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |