{"id":3541,"date":"2009-03-27T09:53:42","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T09:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/03\/27\/physics-video-quiz\/"},"modified":"2009-03-27T09:53:42","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T09:53:42","slug":"physics-video-quiz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/03\/27\/physics-video-quiz\/","title":{"rendered":"Physics Video Quiz"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, “quiz” isn’t really the right word, because I don’t know the right answer. But here’s something weird that I noticed a while ago, and since I needed an excuse to fool around with video a bit, I thought I’d shoot some pictures of it:<\/p>\n

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Here’s the deal: My cell phone is gently curved on one side. If I put the phone on a table with that side down, it will spin reasonably freely, with very little effort. If I try to spin it fast, though, it very quickly develops a pronounced wobble that damps out the spin very quickly. You can see it in the YouTube video above.<\/p>\n

So, the question is: Why does that happen?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(I noticed this while we were interviewing students for a position in the student residential life system that I’m involved with. I think I was starting to annoy the students who were on the interview committee, because I spent the next two hours spinning my phone at different speeds, in different directions, on different surfaces…)<\/p>\n

An additional piece of information that might be useful: the effect is much more pronounced on the lab bench where I shot this video than on the lecture-room table where I first noticed it. When I first saw it, the phone would complete a few revolutions before wobbling, and a couple more while wobbling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, “quiz” isn’t really the right word, because I don’t know the right answer. But here’s something weird that I noticed a while ago, and since I needed an excuse to fool around with video a bit, I thought I’d shoot some pictures of it: Here’s the deal: My cell phone is gently curved on… Continue reading Physics Video Quiz<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-physics","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}