Make an Egg Stand on End.

Could you make an egg lift up on it's end and stay there? Find out how in this experiment.

What you need

What to Do

Hard boil an egg

Lay in on it's side on the surface

Spin the egg as fast as you can.

Does anything strange happen?

What may Happen

If you spin the egg fast enough you will find that it stands up on end.

What is going on?

Because of the shape of the egg, the point of contact with the ground is not directly above the centre of mass of the egg (this is the average position of all the mass of the object, and is the point that the object would spin around naturally.

 Why does this force cause the egg to stand on end?

 The egg is spinning so it acts as a gyroscope. Gyroscopes have a very interesting property.

 This means that the friction on the egg (blue arrow) wil actually cause the egg to rotate at right angles to this (green arrow) and start to stand upright.

Eventually if the egg was spinning fast enough it will stand upright.

The exact dynamics of this is quite complex and was only worked out in 2002 by Keith Moffat from Cambridge.