Spinning Tops   By: John Perry

THE EARL OF PEMBROKE TO THE ABBESS OF WILTON.

"Go spin, you jade! go spin!"

[Illustration: MAGNETISM, LIGHT, AND MOLECULAR SPINNING TOPS.

Page 122.

THE ROMANCE OF SCIENCE.

SPINNING TOPS.

THE "OPERATIVES' LECTURE" OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING AT LEEDS, 6th SEPTEMBER, 1890.

BY

PROFESSOR JOHN PERRY, M.E., D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S.

With Numerous Illustrations.

REPRINT OF NEW AND REVISED EDITION,

With an Illustrated Appendix on the Use of Gyrostats.

LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, Northumberland Avenue, W.C.; 43, Queen Victoria Street, E.C. BRIGHTON: 129, North Street. NEW YORK: E. S. GORHAM.

1910

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE GENERAL LITERATURE COMMITTEE

[ Date of last impression, April 1908 ]

This Report of an Experimental Lecture WAS INSCRIBED TO THE LATE LORD KELVIN, BY HIS AFFECTIONATE PUPIL, THE LECTURER, WHO HEREBY TOOK A CONVENIENT METHOD OF ACKNOWLEDGING THE REAL AUTHOR OF WHATEVER IS WORTH PUBLICATION IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES.

PREFACE.

This is not the lecture as it was delivered. Instead of two pages of letterpress and a woodcut, the reader may imagine that for half a minute the lecturer played with a spinning top or gyrostat, and occasionally ejaculated words of warning, admonition, and explanation towards his audience. A verbatim report would make rather uninteresting reading, and I have taken the liberty of trying, by greater fullness of explanation, to make up to the reader for his not having seen the moving apparatus. It has also been necessary in a treatise intended for general readers to simplify the reasoning, the lecture having been delivered to persons whose life experiences peculiarly fitted them for understanding scientific things. An "argument" has been added at the end to make the steps of the reasoning clearer.

JOHN PERRY.

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SPINNING TOPS.

At a Leeds Board School last week, the master said to his class, "There is to be a meeting of the British Association in Leeds. What is it all about? Who are the members of the British Association? What do they do?" There was a long pause. At length it was broken by an intelligent shy boy: "Please, sir, I know they spin tops!"[1]

Now I am sorry to say that this answer was wrong. The members of the British Association and the Operatives of Leeds have neglected top spinning since they were ten years of age. If more attention were paid to the intelligent examination of the behaviour of tops, there would be greater advances in mechanical engineering and a great many industries. There would be a better general knowledge of astronomy. Geologists would not make mistakes by millions of years, and our knowledge of Light, and Radiant Heat, and other {10} Electro magnetic Phenomena would extend much more rapidly than it does.