Spinning Egg mystery solved

March 28, 2002 2:30 AM

Spinning Egg mystery solved Still recovering from the cold fusion 'breakthrough', the scientific world has finally cracked another mystery: why does a spinning egg flip to a vertical positon ? A few days before Easter, what a coincidence!
posted by swordfishtrombones (6 comments total)

But is God with the Big-endians or the Little-endians?
posted by pracowity at 3:03 AM on March 28, 2002

Is there any video of an egg performing such a stunt ?
posted by crayfish at 5:23 AM on March 28, 2002

Boil an egg, try it out, and let us know.
posted by pracowity at 5:28 AM on March 28, 2002

"There is a critical spinning speed below which the egg stays horizontal. This is about ten revolutions per second - roughly the speed it reaches after a firm flick of the wrist."

When I was a little kid, my sisters were doing this once. We were coloring hard boiled eggs for Easter and my sisters tried to get one to spin vertical and it always went horizontal. How do ya get an egg to spin faster than the flick of a wrist? Install a shipboard motor in the yolk? What?
posted by ZachsMind at 6:19 AM on March 28, 2002

How can they write an article like this and not use the word 'egghead' or 'dome'? Especially a British site. (Not that they used 'boffin' or 'panjandrum' either.)
posted by dhartung at 7:08 AM on March 28, 2002

crayfish, there's a video on the link. click on the word 'movie' under the picture of the egg.
posted by imaswinger at 9:01 AM on March 28, 2002