

Spin-It: Optimizing Moment of Inertia for Spinnable Objects - WestCoastJustin
http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/spin-it/

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stephencanon
I met Emily Whiting (one of the authors) earlier this year; she had a few of
the fabricated tops with her at the time and I spent a few minutes playing
with them. It should be noted that while these are much easier to spin than
un-optimized solids (which don’t spin at all), they are still much, much
harder to spin than normal tops.

Still, it’s a cool little project.

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Pitarou
If they can extend their work to forms that can be reproduced with injection-
molding, the asymmetric yo-yos will make an attractive novelty.

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viggity
for some of the simpler shapes they could probably injection mold multiple
pieces and weld them together. For the more complicated ones, they could
insert the cast weights into the injection molding machine and inject around
them.

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alexchamberlain
Ok, this is cool, but what is the use to Disney of this research?

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damoncali
It's a bit of a stretch to call this research. It's basically an engineering
project to develop toys.

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Stwerp
What then is the research barrier they need to cross? I'm genuinely curious.
This seems more "researchy" than a lot of other items I've read (such as
optimizing a planar antenna geometry with included matching network et.
variants) to me, but I'm perfectly fine with a very blurry
engineering/research line.

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Iftheshoefits
There is "research"\--in which one is poring over an existing body of
knowledge and possibly "tweaking around the edges" to investigate properties
described therein, conducting surveys to gauge response (e.g. "market
research"), and the like. This kind of research is a superficial investigation
into well-established, well-known subject matter, possibly with an interesting
approach or to find a context-specific answer to a question, but not one that
fundamentally adds to the body of knowledge.

Then there is "research"\--in which one is exploring a new, known but
unexplored, or a known, previously investigated but complex problem in a novel
way with the intent to expose previously unknown properties and add to the
body of knowledge. This is the kind of "research", e.g., physicists,
mathematicians, and some engineers do.

I hazard a guess, without knowing for sure, the parent sees a "barrier"
between these two kinds of research, and that he'd place this article in the
first category rather than the latter.

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damoncali
Yup. This is basic engineering as taught early in any mechanical engineering
curriculum. That's all I meant. It's still cool and worth while, I just don't
see anything that separates it from any other application of basic theory.
It's no more research than building a ruby on rails website.

