DRIVEN SPINNING TOP - A ROMANIAN INVENTION
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
It is well known that people like the classical toys: spinning toys, gyroscopes and permanent magnets.
Spinning tops are old toys. They are built from wood, metals, or plastic in different shapes, color and dimentions. Recently some of them produce a sound or/and light. Not much has been changed since beginning. Once it is put into rotation we just look at its movement. No posibility to change the movement, to interact with it.
Gyroscopes are well known toys and devices. They fascinate how the direction is kept constant.
Permanent magnets are used to obtain different configurations using balls, nails, ferromagnetic powder, magnetic fluids. Once the configuration is achieved nothing can happen more, no more fun.
The idea of combining the rotation movement of a gyroscope and permanent magnets has been advanced by Prof. Dr. Ioan Grosu in Romania (Patent No. 91857 from 28 Feb.1987). A classical gyroscope is modified by using two permanent magnets on the rotation axis, coaxial with it. So the gyroscope has an angular momentum and a magnetic movement. A uniform external magnetic field generated by a coil determinates a rotation that is the Larmor precession. This device is didactic and show how the Larmor precession is obtained. Such a gyroscope stimulates the spin of the electron with angular momentum and magnetic momentum.
