Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

This turtle post is kind of stretch.

Mikey gave me a Gömböc for Christmas.

This is a fascinating piece of metal.

So what is a Gömböc? Well, if you went to the link above, you'd see that it "is the first known homogenous object with one stable and one unstable equilibrium point, thus two equilibria altogether on a horizontal surface. It can be proven that no object with less than two equilibria exists."

So, since it is impossible to keep it balanced on its unstable equilibrium point, it will always wobble to its one stable equilibrium point no matter how you set it down on a smooth, horizontal surface.

Weebles do the same thing but they're not homogeneous. They have a weight inside their plastic bodies. A Gömböc achieves its stability completely through its shape.

So, what does this thing have to do with turtles? Good question.

It turns out that the shape of the Gömböc helps explain how some tortoises get back on their feet after they've been flipped onto their backs.

I made a little movie of my Gömböc finding its stable equilibrium point. It's not YouTube-worthy so here it is in Blogger's own video form.

I edited out a lot of the rocking. It takes a long time to finally come to rest.

We'll get back to more literal representations of turtles next week.

(Thanks, Mikey!)