The Surprisingly Useful Physics of Desk Toys 

We like you better when you are not drinking

As long as it's one of the 14 they offer. Duolingo offers 43. Just sayin'.

@makegrowlabrepeat Are you talking to that bird or Hank? If the latter, that might be projection, if the former you might want a doctor to check out your own birds. As for @SciShow: if Babble ends the contract, consider Grammalrly. It's worth it.

That is a hilarious way to put it. My condolences💛🦜

You worked your first pet to death, forced it to labour until it's very body began to break down... how do you sleep at night?

​@@Totalinternalreflection 😂

Aw jeez. Never had one fall apart like that. Sorry for your loss.

Turns out methylene chloride is a good solvent

“I guess your pay will be docked, then.”

Muscle Hank returns.

I can see my students applying this same logic, but I would be happy that they have been watching Hank Green.

@@roberttrimmier3276 Having seen some of the junk they could be watching. Yeah.

His will is guarded by more than just charisma.

Similarly, the fun thing about seeing a new and amazing idea for a perpetual motion machine is figuring out where the energy actually gets lost!

I work from home, I can do that all day long! ...with a Newton's cradle, of course!

Sometimes, we underestimate just how complicated something is when we come to understand it. “Why bring this up,” one might ask? Let’s just say that self-reflection in what we can do compared to others can be helpful later on in life, provided you are reasonable with it.

@@awkwurdtalke-gamesandgamer8236 what's that got to do with playing with my balls?

And some play with balls as their actual work and gain millions from it. And we have created gazillion ways to play with our and each other's balls and we call them sports. How crazy is that?

that big wheel was another form of gyroscope. the Seattle science center had a powered gyroscope on a turntable. you could stand on the turntable and turn the enclosure the gyroscope was in and make the turntable rotate.

Clarke's Third Law (or Agatha's First).

No, magic is thoughts and feelings made manifest. I am a fantasy writer 📝 🎉😊

Same with chemistry ❤️👩🏻‍🔬⚗️

@@emanym It is indeed that, but magic is also physics that science can't yet explain :D

​@@emanymA person's behavior is also their thoughts and feelings made manifest, but we can explain it better, so we don't call it magic. If I could reliably heat a kettle by frustration or incantations alone, people would seek to explain it. Insofar as they succeed, the effect would turn into science.

It works perfectly until it falls over. 😂

​@@fisherdog06 chernobird

hmm yes... okuu moment

​@@fisherdog06i read this as "it works perfectly until it fails" lol

​@@fisherdog06"I should never have left you in charge!"

you’re a poet, my friend

It's so cringey when people say they have a dark sense of humour. Lol yes we get it you think you're edgy. Also your "joke" or whatever that was meant to be makes literally no sense at all.

Thanks, I’ll definitely search out that rabbithole!!

yeah, the Apollo 13 movie talked about it. it's possible to build your gyroscope so it's immune to gimbal lock, but it requires an additional (4th I think?) ring with the expense and complexity that requires. for the Apollo program, they decided to use the cheaper mechanism and just train the crew to avoid the gimbal lock situations

Only some of them. Some of them would actually be funny to see them play with/react to. (Like the gyro)

Dang I was thinking of getting one and didn’t think about that

My cat ate nearly all the wires of my Newton's craddle when I was a kid. :(

Is this the equivalent of the Krebs Cycle Hole for biology/biochem?

The WHOLE time I kept waiting for a single cut where we saw it drink. That's all I could think about.

Haha, I'm right there with ya Hank!

I am now just starting to understand how a gyroscope originated all that thankfulness. We didn't have it even mentioned in Physics class. 😢

Yes! SciManDan? Creaky? Or another?

@@IAmTheShaz sciman and creaky. I continue to use it. I even after Bob died. His greatest contribution to human society.

15°/h times the cosine of your latitude. It's called the "horizontal Earth rate." Back when I was learning to fly, before there were glass cockpits, the directional gyro had a little knob. We'd have to adjust the knob every 15 minutes or so to get the DG to agree with the magnetic compass. Some of the error was due to gimbal friction but most of it was from the rotation of the Earth.

Raking works on the same principle as do pick guns

Damn, that sounds really cool. Where do I get one and what should I be searching for?

@@PondScummer the one I'm mentioning, is a simple top with a needlepoint, that's sits inside of this weird bowl like bass. Kind of like a Beyblade stadium. But before beyblade. This thing is much smaller about the size of a jar lid or bowl. There is a small magnet inside of the top. And in the bass you'll find a magnet as well. Is concave with carved groves. So the top as it spins, Working its way through this maze towards the bottom. As it approaches the bottom, the base magnet repels the magnet inside the top pushing it back to the top of this base. And as its sloped, gravity naturally has the top go back towards the bottom. It continues indefinitely until you stop it or friction slows it down too much. And as me posting it, it's been about 3 months or so since I actually started it. It's a simple magnet repulsion with gravity. Someone gave it to me a very long time ago. But I can't remember who now. It was my professor I had before. He had on his desk, and I was very curious about it at the time. There is no batteries just magnetism, and gravity.

@@hughcaldwell1034 you can usually find them in the usual places, Amazon or ebay, I'm pretty sure even Walmart's online. The catch is you don't want to get the electronic one that runs off power or maybe you do? It's a simple stainless steel or aluminum spin top, but has a positively or negatively charged magnet in the core. And the spinning base usually more like a bowl, is laid on or inserted with a powerful magnet of the opposite polarity as the spin top. As the magnet spins, it's pushed away from the center, but due to the angle of the bowl, it wants to be pushed back down with gravity. And what the constant magnetic pushing away and pushing the magnet to spin, it keeps circling it for a couple hours, or for me going on over a month. Although I did notice that it has engraved grooves into it, so it's kind of being focused. But the ones you find on these are not the one my professor gave me. This one's old school. And it's just straight up magnets. I would say ceramic or Monster magnets, with a opposite polarity magnet that's inside the spin top itself. For reference I got this when I was in Middle school, so this one was made about well over 20 years ago. Not like the ones you're going to find being readily advertised or sold on these sites.

I wouldn't call it a toy, but there are perpetual clocks inside glass domes. They have a cylinder of liquid that expands with temperature and air pressure and pushes a piston that winds the spring. Way outside my budget.

I've seen those used in actual lab settings to monitor temperatures inside terrariums. A similar device can be used to test your car's antifreeze, as density changes as the proportion of water to antifreeze changes.

!!! Any books or games or mods you'd like to share?? Your thoughts sound FASCINATING!

@@awaredeshmukh3202 I mean... I haven't made a mod since Minecraft 1.12, have never actually completed a book, and have only completed games made on a short time limit for game jams... I have this problem finishing projects where my motivation jumps from one project to another as soon as it takes more than a week 😅 But if you wanted to check out one of the game jam games of mine, you can check out "Eubert 2 Must Die" (by IceMetalPunk -- I'm currently on my work account, but that's my personal account username everywhere). It seems all my older games were in jams that have since been deleted and lost to time, unfortunately :(

I love this! Really makes me think about the Age of Legends from the Wheel of Time, and how they had a sort of magic-tech where they used technology to enhance their magic.

I’m so sorry :( I hope you’re able to fill your apartment to the brim with things of intellectual intrigue someday very soon. If you’re open to a suggestion that will more than likely prove to be utterly useless, I could think of a couple of places beyond thrift shops that might be worth checking, assuming that your part of the world has versions of these that are similar to mine, anyway. I’m thinking that maybe you could post some “wanted” ads on various community cork boards, like maybe at the local colleges or universities, or maybe even high schools. I know my high school physics teachers and my college professors definitely had some extra science doohickeys around. Especially after science fairs and stuff. Maybe you could post an ad in the school paper or newsletter too (that would probably reach more people than the community cork boards). I’m thinking teachers would be happy to donate some of their extras to someone that really wants them, especially if you’re willing to fix them up. You might also have some luck putting an ad on the cork board of large office buildings. Surely somebody in one of those huge buildings will have received a “desk toy” as a gift at one point that they no longer want or don’t have space for. Also, I don’t know if the app “Nextdoor” is available or popular enough in your area to be of any use, but it’s super popular everywhere I’ve lived in the US over the last 10 years, and people use that like crazy for all kinds of stuff, including posting stuff for sale and want ads. You could also be much more specific about what area you wanted to search in on Nextdoor than you could be on Craigslist, which is very useful if you’re in a big city and don’t want to travel far. Same goes for Facebook Marketplace. People sell TONS of stuff on there in my area. Again, I know you’ve probably already tried most if not all of these suggestions, and that’s if they’re even available to you at all, but I thought it was worth my time to type them out just in case one of them hadn’t occurred to you. Best of luck finding what you’re looking for, fellow science lover ❤

@@shelbylynn9 no I haven't 😊. Thank you so much for taking the time to think with me, and to write it all out! There are some great tips in there. I live in the Netherlands and we don't do a lot of the things like corkboards and such. Due to chronic health conditions and not owning a car, travelling is somewhat of a barrier as well. But I will be putting some wanted ads online (never did this, as I feel noone checks those, but I'll try), and I'll be checking in with some schools and university's for sure. In time I will be able to purchase some of them new even. It's just that I have different priorities right now. As most of my bedding (and underwear) is full of holes 😅 and my refrigerator is slowly dying. Really appreciate your time and attention ❤️. Have a great day!

They have real sets instead of green screen.

They keep doing these little asides to a second camera.

I don't think I ever saw one of those work properly. I bought one from a joke shop when I was about thirteen, and I always regretted not spending the money on stink bombs.

Same as on planes.

We're all non-linear down here. 😊

It applies to everything that behaves in a well, non-linear way. For example, Human population growth was in a bit of a linear growth for most of the time (not taking into account pandemics that wiped away a big chunk of the population) but entered in a non-linear behavior since the Industrial Revolution and medicine advancements were more common and accesible, so it behaves in an exponential way

I feel like this comment went *right* on over people's heads. And that's a shame.

@@playgroundchooser thanks

Entropy is still a thing, though. Even if energy is conserved, it tends to move to forms/states where it can’t be used to do work.

Legend has it that it's still going down the stairs to Hank's basement

@@ZeroOneInfinity What other toys do you think the slinky would find there? I'm too afraid to look.

Sonic spinners as thaumatropes