Spin

=====================================

The monosyllabic four-letter word 'spin' governs everything from Quark to the Cosmos and beyond (the 'beyond' being the spin I put on every tale I tell).

Every child, like I did, meets spin first in the spinning top in their toy kit. My 6-month-old Ishani is fascinated by the spinning top and stares at it till it rolls and falls over (and then grabs and has a crack at it as at any other teething teaser).

The child's fascination is instinctively scientific, I guess. The top would fall head over its heels if it were not spinning. The sleeping top is a wonder to all; kids and Kleins.

I used to play with my father's glass paper weight with its distorted and magnified floral bubbles. Setting it spin, I saw what I later learned as a 'Tippe Top': sometimes, it would do the unexpected; roll over and spin on its wrong side. Much later, in the KGP-HWH Locals, plastic Tippe Tops were sold for a Rupee each. I bought a dozen and played with them endlessly, with my son.

Then of course, the 'ring tennis' in our school called for not only spin but wobble. When I read Feynman, I was delighted to read that his fascination with the relation of the spin to the wobble of a pancake (Frisbee) in an eating joint led him back to his Nobel-winning research work after his weary war-work.

Then again the spin we imparted to our ball-badminton made the game challenging. Ping-Pong, Tennis, Cricket, golf and most everything with a ball uses spin to give top, bottom, side- spins, swings, googlies and the works.

When I was 5, I used to look forward to visits to our Village Shiv Temple: there was this exotic tree (I can't name it in English). It had its fruit like a small ball attached with large triple 'rotor' blades turned upwards. When they dry in summer, they are feather-weight. And, when wind blows and detaches them from their stems, they fly a long distance, rotor blades spinning and giving them a wonderful buoyancy. They land on earth in a majestic descent like so many tiny helicopters. There were several of these huge trees on the roadside at KGP and I never tired of playing with them.

Anyone who thinks that the Mechancis of tops is trivial, beware! Klein (Felix) and Sommerfeld needed four hefty and tough Volumes to cover their theory: 'Theory of Tops'. Legend has it that Sommerfeld and his Guru, Klein, used to visit the sea-beach regularly to play with pebbles, setting them spin to verify their theory. There are the spherical tops, symmetric tops and asymmetric tops, with their parallels in molecules and their spectroscopy.

Once upon a time (I don't know now), The Royal Society of London used to have Christmas Lectures and Demos to which the Queen was the Special Invitee apart from the paying public. One of them used to be a Popular Scientific Lecture-Demo by an FRS. Two of these were printed as monographs: Perrry's 'Spinning Tops and Gyroscopes' and Boys's 'Soap Bubbles'. These two booklets are 'must-reads' for all and especially students of Physics.

Perry's booklet is wonderful. He demonstrates not only the basic stability imparted by spin, but also the directional stability of a gyroscope by locking a spinning one in a suit-case and asking an audience to hold it on his head and turn his head this way and that; with near-disastrous rollicking antics that followed.

And it was noted with delight that the stage after Perry's Lecture was taken by a professional juggler, most of whose tricks with hats and rings depended on 'spin'.

And, when I was a smoker, it was a delightful hobby to blow and watch the stability and twirling progress of smoke rings in the placid winter air of KGP. And what a pleasure it was to find an entire Chapter devoted to smoke-rings in Feynman; a lesson in viscosity of air!

That spin can shatter and kill was understood by our Gods: Lord Vishnu's Chakra (discus) is his deadly weapon. Also, in Krishna Leela,a demon called Vritthasur carries the child Krishna up and away before he dodges and kills the demon. Of course he was a Personification of Tornado (Twister) which is a common sight in the dusty hot plains of UP and Bihar (even Bengal and Bangladesh); not to speak of the vast unending plains of the US Mid-West.

And the grinder's wheel. Just by a couple of swings on his pedal he converts his carborundum wheel into one that sends sparks flying when touched by a steel axe. Not to talk of buffing machines used to polish gold ornaments.

Equally deadly visuals are those of bikini-clad beauties doing their somersaults on a gymnasium floor or on a diving board in a swimming pool, all of which depend on imparting themselves spins of various delicacies.


======================================