Magic UFO (Levitron)
About
A levitating floating top. Also sold as the "Levitron". Again, this is probably more of a "toy" than a game, but it is just so incredibly cool that I'm including it anyway.
You have a small stand about 4"x4"x1" which houses a ring shaped magnet. If you spin a top just right, you can get the top to levitate above the stand.
There is a great page at MIT about the physics of this here
MIT Physics
Thoughts
Tim: Extremely cool. It's a bit tricky to setup as you have to get the stand nearly perfectly level, and you need to add and remove weights from the top, but it is really neat to see it when it works.
Laura: I was given little background to this, so I was taken aback when the top started floating. How incredibly awesome!
Very fun, but can be irritating for people who don't have good dexterity or patience. However, I was able to get the top to float, and felt like some sort of genius.
Trivia
- This works by using "spin-stabilized magnetic levitation" which is a heck of a mouthful.
- The top is both unstable at a low sping and a high spin. The top spins stable in the range from about 20 to 35 revolutions per second (rps). It is completely unstable above 35-40 rps and below 18 rps. After the top is spun and levitated, it slows down because of air resistance. After a few minutes it reaches the lower stability limit (18 rps) and falls.
- I found a video of one spinning in a vacuum chamber for 9 minutes
7-13-2020