Spinning Tops

The spinning top has been around for ages – it cannot be said more precisely. The spinning top is certainly one of the oldest toys of mankind. In today's Iraq a spinning top was found which archaeologists date back to 3500 years before Christ.

The fascination of the spinning top in antiquity is extensively documented. In those days, whip tops were particularly popular. They were turned by means of a whip string and then kept in motion by means of targeted strikes – a challenging toy that could not be mastered as a child but only in youth. In ancient Greece such toys were not simply disposed of, but were presented in a temple ritual and consecrated to the gods when the teenager entered adulthood, which is why we know of many finds of ancient spinning tops.

The mathematical fascination of the spinning top has also been documented since antiquity. Pappos of Alexandria, for example, in the 4th century B.C., described findings about the volume calculation of rotating bodies, which are still valid. To this day, the gyroscope is rich in knowledge. This is because angular momentum as a physical quantity influences just about every aspect of our lives – starting with the fact that we live on a rotating planet.