Contents

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    Friction

    Elasticity

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Explanation of the sit up

Now, after the foregoing reflections we are able to understand the phenomenon tippe top:

Because of the friction the energy must decrease. But our conservation quantity - which contains angular momentum components and thus rotation energy - remains constant (if we neglect the influence of boring friction). Therefore the top tries to "avoid" the gliding friction and moves into a state of minimal energy loss!

It can be shown, that for certain top parameters and starting values (i.e. the magnitude of G) exactly the both represented positions come into question. Note that the left position is unstable and only the right position is (temporary) stable!

to the next section: Numerical simulations – plots