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Re: Spinning Class Ring



I BELIEVE that this is for the same reason that a cooked egg will
spin up onto the pointy end instead of the rounder end.

It's the curvature of the surface that 'does it'. Pointy stems on
tops AND the famous 'Tippy Top' (that turns itself OVER) are other
similar effects.

(I KNOW that it's not a WHY answer - some equations will come from
SOMEbody with words like 'tensor' included.)



At 12:47 PM -0400 on 5/6/02, Ron Curtin wrote
A student asked me a question that I have heard before, but I don't know a
good answer. If you spin a class ring on a table top, it spins around so
that the heavy part (the front of the ring) always moves up to a position
furthest above the tabletop. It doesn't matter if the heavy part of the
ring starts at the bottom or at the top. The student and I wonder why this
happens.

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