Rotation Resources

Games and Tools

The Torque Simulator 9000

Ever wanted a computer game that teaches you about the intertwining phenomena of angular momentum, torque, and angular motion? Of course you did. Call of Duty got nothing on this.

Four-Bar Hopping

Play around with any mechanism design you can dream of (provided it has four linkages and obeys Grashof's Law).

Videos

Rotation Translation

Angular momentum does a lot of weird things—but maybe the weirdest is turning rotation around one axis into rotation around another.

Yo-Yos... in Space

Yo-yo tricks are impressive displays of angular momentum on Earth. But in space? Well, everything is cooler in space, right?

Tetherball

No sport quite captures the majesty of rotational motion and moment of inertia like the glorious playground sport of tetherball. Watch the undisputed world champions of the game at work.

Wheel Gymnastics

The name doesn't quite do it justice—more like "wheel how in the world are they doing that." See how many times you can spot a change in moment of inertia that speeds up or slows down rotation.

Websites

The Science of Cycling

The Tour de France is really just a big, mobile rotational motion laboratory. With spandex.

The Phantom of the Bicycle

But at the same time, why do bikes even need all those definitely-not-doped-up riders?

Galaxy Quest

The moon rotates around the Earth, the Earth rotates around the sun, the sun rotates, and—yes—the galaxy itself spins, too.

But It's not Just a Milky Way Thing

Spiral galaxies, such as NGC 524 (a scant 90 million light years away) are abundant in the universe.