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Nature 416, 385-386 (28 March 2002) | doi:10.1038/416385a;

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Classical dynamics: Spinning eggs |[mdash]| a paradox resolved

If a hard-boiled egg is spun sufficiently rapidly on a table with its axis of symmetry horizontal, this axis will rise from the horizontal to the vertical. (A raw egg, by contrast, when similarly spun, will not rise.) Conversely, if an oblate spheroid is spun sufficiently rapidly with its axis of symmetry vertical, it will rise and spin about the vertical on its rounded edge with its axis of symmetry now rotating in a horizontal plane.

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