I took an empty plastic easter egg resting on a flat surface, and spun it along its visible long axis many times and got all these outcomes. (I did not calculate the frequency of each outcome)
1. continue spinning on its long axis (depending on how fast it was spun)
2. start wobbling (spinning on some intermediate axis)
3. start spinning on its short axis (pointing up).
I did some reading on why hard boiled eggs do this, but still not sure why the plastic egg has so many outcomes. ELI5
In: Physics
Angular momentum is to blame. Pretty easy to find way more in depth explanations which will satisfy you more.
In this spirit of this sub though, spinning things like to spin around a central axis.
When you spin an egg shape along its long axis it’s not able to have the weight evenly distributed and will want to change position to balance out. Because there’s a fat and skinny end it will behave weirdly when you start to spin it, this has nothing to do with being made of chocolate or not but about the shape and it’s distribution of weight.
If it’s not going fast enough there’s not enough force to really do anything though. In this low speed scenario gravity is keeping the egg on its side and the rotation is only enough to make it rotate. It doesn’t have enough energy to try stand up so it doesn’t.
If it’s spinning a bit faster the angular momentum will start to try and force the egg into a more “stable” state by reorienting. If it’s not spinning fast enough though all it can do is start to realign before being overcome by other forces like gravity and friction and just wobble about.
If it’s going even faster then it has enough momentum to throw itself up onto the more stable axis of rotation found on the ends of the egg. It’s now acting like a gyroscope and the rotation is constantly causing the egg to sort of throw itself back towards being upright.
I can sort of recall a great video about how gyroscopes work, perhaps Vsauce, that explains this really well.
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