Researchers design new type of object that rights itself when knocked over

 Articles 20070407 F8327 1214 This is a drawing of the "Comeback Kid" — a toy with a weighted bottom that rights itself when you knock it over. Weebles and inflatable punching clowns with a pocket of sand in the bottom work the same way.

Recently two mathematicians designed and built an object that rights itself without a weighted bottom. Gábor Domokos of the Budapest Institute of Technology and Economics and Péter Várkonyi of Princeton University made this wooden object that has a shape that rights itself no matter how it's disturbed. Interestingly, the shape is very much like an Indian Star Tortoise.

200704131141Now, Domokos and Várkonyi are measuring turtles to see if any of them are truly self-righting, or whether the turtles need to kick their legs a bit to flip themselves back upright. So far, they've tested 30 turtles and found quite a few that are nearly self-righting. Várkonyi admits that most biology experiments study many more animals than that but, he says, "it's much work, measuring turtles."

The mathematicians still face an unanswered question. The self-righting objects they've found have been smooth and curvy. They wonder if it's possible to create a self-righting polyhedral object, which would have flat sides. They think it is probably possible, but they haven't yet managed to find such an object. So, they are offering a prize to the first person to find one: $10,000, divided by the number of sides of the polyhedron.

It sounds like a tempting challenge, but there's a catch: Domokos and Várkonyi are guessing that a self-righting polyhedron would have many thousands of sides. So the prize might only amount to a few pennies.

Link (Via Complexity Digest)