Description
Book Synopsis Everywhere, things spin--wheels turn, motors hum, tornadoes roar. This book explains the history and basic physics of spinning objects, from yo-yos, drills, propellers, and washing machines, to ballet dancers, dust devils, and bacteria.
The book gives instructive, entertaining accounts of everyday sights: Does a curve ball really curve? Why do figure skaters tuck in their arms? Can you make a disposable pen fly? How does a falling cat always land on its feet? Answers to these questions (and many others) tell the amazing story of things that spin.
Trade Review“Gruber explores how the sometimes counterintuitive physics of spin created a wide variety of toys, sports, useful labor-saving devices, and deadly accurate weaponry. Just as the axle and wheel revolutionized transportation on land, the propeller harnessed rotary motion to conquer the skies and sea. ... No math is necessary to follow along with the physics, and detailed explanations with familiar examples (baseballs in flight, for example) make the concepts concrete before exploring more esoteric examples such as electromagnetism and aerodynamics. ... An accessible and rewarding exploration of the physics of circular motion in everyday life.” -
Library Journal“As a child, Bill Gruber was given a toy gyroscope that was set spinning by pulling on a string. Decades later, he has written an ode to all things that spin, rotate, and revolve. From the theory of the Frisbee, to the origins of the roulette wheel, to the reason that galaxies rotate, his engaging and accessible writing takes you on a guided tour of the culture and the science that make the world go round.” - Sidney Perkowitz, author,
Empire of Light, Universal Foam, and
Science Sketches“
Spin is a masterful example of the genre of popular science that applies philosophy, physics, and a touch of the poet to a topic that otherwise might elude us all. William Gruber sees his subject everywhere, and, through examples from salad spinners to the solar system, he helps us see it, too, and to wonder along with him: Why is everything awhirl?” - Richard Panek, author of
The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our FeetTable of Contents
- Introduction: Of Gyroscopes and Pitchers' Mounds
- Chapter 1. Toy Story
- Chapter 2. Around the House
- Chapter 3. Amazing Grace
- Interchapter I: A (Very) Short History of a Metaphor
- Chapter 4. A Day at the Ballpark
- Chapter 5. Big Wheels Keep on Turning
- Chapter 6. Bullet Points
- Interchapter II: Making Iron Come
- Chapter 7. In the Sky
- Chapter 8. A Descent into the Maelstrom
- Chapter 9. Really, Really Big and Really, Really Small
- Coda: James Clerk Maxwell and the Defenestration of Cats
- Chapter Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
