Fidget Spinner Spin Time
Why fidget spinners slow down and eventually stop spinning
Where this idea comes from
Start here — this is the source that inspired this exploration.
Introduction
When you spin a fidget spinner, it slows down and stops because of friction in the bearing and drag from the air. It's tempting to assume this follows the same exponential decay pattern as a cooling cup of coffee, but the physics doesn't obviously predict that: constant bearing friction acts like a constant braking torque, which would produce a straight-line drop in rotation speed, not a curved one. Air resistance, if it matters at these speeds, behaves differently again. The only way to know which model actually fits is to measure a real spinner's rotation rate over time and compare a linear decay against an exponential one. Better bearings should still mean a slower decay, whichever shape the curve turns out to be.
Guiding Questions
- How can you measure the spinner's rotation rate over time?
- What shape does the data follow when you graph it — a straight line, a curve, or something else?
- Fit both a linear model and an exponential decay model to your data. Which one fits better, and does that match what the physics of bearing friction predicts?
- What factors affect how quickly the spinner slows down?
- How does bearing quality relate to the rate of slowdown, whichever model turns out to fit?