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When Things Spin, Science Happens

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By all appearances, the coming energy crisis will be solved by strapping boat oars to steel rings and spinning them around in the air.

"[...] and if science has taught me anything, it's that if something is spinning, it's important."
Gordon Frohman, Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman

We all know spinning is spectacular, but sometimes "spectacular" means that science starts happening.

Yet, Real Life technology advancement is in part trying to minimize moving parts because fewer stress-points typically result in fewer chances of failure while maximizing efficiency. But a static prop is not visibly exciting to watch in action. Your computer, while it has fans and drives which spin, tries to avoid active motion while in operation. In many cases, the fact that the machine or technology is operating at all can be somewhat oblique to the naked eye. Witness the many people who call into Tech Support claiming that their computer isn't working... because it isn't turned on. When it comes to various visual media, movement equals operation, which allows the audience to recognize that the machine is actually working or operational. Even if there is an obvious, prominent signifier of power (big green light, flashing red lights, etc.) positioned on the machine, in the eyes of many — it's not actually on until something starts moving.

In Real Life rotation has many interesting and perplexing properties: precession, gyroscopic stabilization, and the generation of electric/magnetic fields just to name a few. Writers often use the intrinsic mystery of such phenomena to increase the plausibility of their devices functioning by making them rotate. This is especially true when the device involved needs to generate a field or zone of fictional type, being directly analogous to electric field generation.

In addition, rotation is a visually exciting way of informing the audience that the device is operating, and hopefully doing something sciency. Besides, rotation has the benefit of a closed path: if science just flew off in a straight line it'd be out of shot.

This trope is a sub-trope of Applied Phlebotinum. Probably related to Technicolor Science. See also Centrifugal Farce.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In Outlaw Star, the FTL-drives in wide use seems to work by spinning something that looks like a mix between a drill and a helicopter rotor. Two of them, in opposite directions.
  • Spiral Power is the crux of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and the reason the Scary Dogmatic Aliens are trying to kill everybody. It's also the theme of a Fauxlosophic Narration delivered by Leeron. Although considering which Anime we're talking about perhaps it might be more like "When Things Spin Science Collapses."
  • In Godannar, the title robot's plasma drive does this whenever it powers up.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has Momentum, a big spinning thing that provides power to all of Neo Domino City. It's not quite explained how it works, other than by harnessing the powers of momentum. Although if it explodes, then it can split the land in two.
  • Ships in Cowboy Bebop have rotating sections. Nominally they're areas with Centrifugal Gravity, but the animation sometimes makes it seem the rest of the ship has actual Artifical Gravity.
  • Most of Air Gear's fantastical pseudo-science runs on this. Rollerblading on air, bubbles with considerable tearing power, portable black holes, anything.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam 00 the GN drives have spinning flywheels in them, which start spinning when they launch the mechs.

    Comic Books 
  • The Flash deals with almost every situation involving science or technobabble by spinning or running in a circle at super-speed.
  • Superman in the Silver Age could even stop tornadoes and Time Travel by doing so.

    Films — Animation 
  • In Batman: Gotham Knight, (Field Test) Batman employs a powerful EM field generator to stop bullet-fire, normally no practically sized device would be capable of this, but hey, it spins; it must work.
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games, Twilight's magic-detecting device sports a purple light spinning along the round outer shell once activated. When the light stops spinning, it points in the direction of any magical energy it detects.
  • In Treasure Planet, the Centroid is an asteroid-sized spinning sphere at the core of an artificial world, powering a Cool Gate.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Time Machine (2002): The titular machine is a cool-looking clockwork Steampunk mechanism with many spinning parts that projects a glowing spherical force field in which it travels through time. Which was partly inspired by the 1960 version, which had a huge disc on the back.
  • Also from The Time Machine (1960), the talking rings that contain humanity's history are activated by spinning them on a flat surface. They continue to spin for the duration of the recording, no matter how long it is.
  • Star Trek:
    • The Doomsday device in Star Trek: Nemesis spun faster as it got closer to exploding.
    • Star Trek (2009): Ambassador Spock's ship, with three separately-rotating... things which are obviously scientific and important because they have a glowy thing in the middle.
  • In The Lawnmower Man, the insane protagonist strapped himself into one of those gyroscope contraptions with the hoops, and after much spinning, his mind was projected into virtual reality. The idea being to allow his body to move and reorient freely in all directions to match appearances inside the virtual space.
  • In Contact, the huge alien-contacting machine has concentric rings that spin around each other on two axes. In the novel these are named "Benzels" after the inventor of the merry-go-round.
  • Magneto's mutant making machine in X-Men is a very strong example. The spinning really seems to be an integral part of its operation. And it's designed to be operated by moving the wheels around with magnetic powers apparently. Sort of makes one wonder if Magneto could have skipped kidnapping Rogue if he'd just installed some kind of motor in the thing.
  • Superman: The Movie had a couple spinning rings to trap Zod and his minions. Since there was nothing else keeping them trapped there, it's assumed they're Making Science Happen.
  • Men in Black:
  • C-3PO's skeletal form in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace had a silver spinning thing inside his head. That would be his brain, according to the novels.
  • In Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession, Shurik's time machine has many little spinning parts, as well as generous amounts of smoke and mirrors.
  • Event Horizon shows a weird variant of the trope. The black hole-making gravity drive on the titular ship spins slowly in standby but, when activated, its three rings stop together. Then something pseudo-sciency happens. Also, everything in the room is covered with spikes for no apparent reason. They were originally supposed to interact with the gravity drive, with the spikes acting as conducting points for excess energy, but they didn't have the budget to put those kind of special effects into the movie, so they left them in for Rule of Scary.
  • The device used to arm the nanomite warheads in GI Joe The Rise Of Cobra involved lots of spinning.
  • Kenneth's machine in Safety Not Guaranteed has a fair number of rotating things on it.
  • In Innerspace the miniaturization process at the government lab spins Tuck's minisub at absurdly high rates before breaking it down and shrinking it. The more advanced and streamlined lab the bad guys use skips the spinning and gets straight to the breaking down and shrinking.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • When the outer breastplate is closed during the Mark III suiting-up sequence in Iron Man, the structures surrounding the arc reactor spin counter-clockwise ever so slightly.
    • Ant-Man and the Wasp: The end of the Quantum Tunnel that sends people to the Quantum Realm is surrounded by a large spinning machinery with telescopic parts. The first hint there is a malfunction is that the machine stops spinning.
  • The short film "The Centrifuge Brain Project" depicts a scientist's journey to unlock higher human brain activity through centrifuges—centrifuges disguised as increasingly distressing and impossible amusement-park rides that seek to push human brains further and further into some alleged true potential.

    Literature 
  • In Alastair Reynolds novel The Prefect they use "Search Turbines" - computers that are spun up to somehow use improve their computing capability. This turns into a significant plot point.
  • In the Discworld series:
    • In Thief of Time, master clockmaker Jeremy Clockson's perfect clock built to measure the universal tick used electricity and Magitek to spin light round and round... and made a hole in the universe. And stopped time.
    • Going Postal has Bloody Stupid Johnson's spinning wheel on which pi equals exactly three was used to punch a different hole through the universe in order to sort letters. (It was actually made as part of an organ. It just turned out to work better for sorting letters.)
  • Implied in James Blish's Spindizzy drive from his Cities in Flight series. Spindizzies are based on P. M. S. Blackett's work on planetary magnetism, correlating magnetism, gravity, and angular momentum. Some writers (like this one) say that "spin [it] dizzy" is what the device does to the subatomic particles: changing their angular momentum. However, because the device itself is never actually seen or described in canon, it’s possible that it itself spins. (Blackett's work in this area was discredited to his own satisfaction in his lifetime.)
  • The titular craft from the Rendezvous with Rama series generates gravity from spinning (see "centrifugal force") and odd effects arise from Coriolis forces that the characters use to their advantage.
  • The Ringworld not only spins for gravity, its spin also allows it to act magnetically on its sun to produce solar-flare megalasers, fuel its stabilizing jets with ramscoops, and even turn the whole Ringworld system mobile.
  • In Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away, When Things Spin, Magic Happens... or rather, Anti-Magic, as the wizard-wheel burns up all the Mana in the area until it depletes the local Background Magic Field, leaving a dead zone.
  • The Star Trek novel Immortal Coil revisits most if not all of the different types of Artificial Intelligence the various crews encountered over the years. When the android-making apparatus from "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" appears, the scientists studying it marvel at the brilliance of it, but even they can't explain why the thing spins around when it runs.
  • Revelation Space Series: The 'hypometric weapon', an unfathomably advanced weapon (it erases matter from spacetime) built from alien-provided schematics without understanding how it actually works, does a lot of spinning when it's activated. A lot of spinning. It's described alternately as "a corkscrewing, meshing, interweaving gyre of myriad silver blades" and a "threshing, squirming complexity".

    Live-Action TV 
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In "The Asset", there's Dr. Franklin Hall's giant graviton machine.
  • As an inversion, the spinning sections of Earth Alliance, Drazi and Vree ships in Babylon 5 show that they are less advanced than the other races, who use artificial gravity instead of centrifugal forces.
  • We don't actually get to see them doing their thing until very near the end of the series, but jump drives in Battlestar Galactica (2003) must "spin up" before being activated.
  • On The Big Bang Theory's season 10, Sheldon, Leonard and Howard are working on a quantum gyroscope, which is composed of three rings spinning around a central box. When it is tested for the first time, they mention that watching it for too long can give vertigo. Sheldon, who was filming in the back, just faints without a word.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The TARDIS spins while she's in flight or travelling through the Time Vortex. Although it's revealed in "Journey's End" that's because the Doctor has a hard time stabilizing it on his lonesome, when she's conceived to have six pilots.
    • When it's not in flight, the Time Rotor - the center column of the console - also spins. Some sources indicate that this is the TARDIS scanning it's surroundings and taking readings.
    • "The Time Monster": The "jammer" concocted by the Doctor, made of all sorts of household junk and a nice cup of tea.
    • "The Lazarus Experiment": Professor Lazarus' rejuvenation machine spins to create a state of hypersonic resonance.
    • "Blink" combines it with It Runs on Nonsensoleum, where a gadget has a big rotating wheel on the end:
      The Doctor: This is my timey-wimey Detector. It goes "ding" when there's stuff.
    • "Planet of the Dead" lampshades it with another one of the Doctor's little science-detecting gadgets.
      The Doctor: The little dish should go round. That little dish, there. [about thirty seconds pass] Oooh, the little dish is going round!
    • "The Lodger": The Doctor uses a similar approach to create some sort of scanning device from bits and pieces of terrestrial "technology". Lampshaded when the Doctor has to pass it off as an artwork, "commentary on modern society". Craig doesn't buy it.
  • Eureka:
    • The "tachyon accelerator" is three spinning rings.
    • A few episodes later, a large device that's supposed to do something with isolating transuranic elements (which in the real world would involve a particle accelerator) has lots of wildly rotating components on several different axis. One of which wangs Carter in the head, setting up the cause of the remainder of the episode.
  • In Firefly, how Serenity's engines function is never explained, other than it must spin to work. According to the director, the engine is a gravity drive, which still doesn't explain why it has to spin.
  • Stargate: The Stargate itself is an aversion to this. Yes, the Earth gate spins, but this is a function of the backup interface which the Tau'ri use, and has no relation to the actual workings of the gate. Gates never spin under normal circumstances. Until Stargate Universe, where the entire gate spins. Indeed, it seems that the older the technology for the gate, the more spinning is required. Spoofed in Stargate SG-1's self-parody episode "200":
    Puppet General Hammond: I'm the general and I want it to spin!
  • Star Trek:
    • The Xindi superweapon in Star Trek: Enterprise has numerous spinning parts, which end up aligning several lenses when it's time to fire it.
    • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", a duplicate robot Kirk was made by a spinning alien doohickey. Lampshaded by Doctor Ira Graves when he encounters it in the spinoff novel Immortal Coil: "Why in the world would the platform need to spin? It doesn't make any sense. It's almost like... a lot of hand waving. Idle motion."
    • Heck, the TOS nacelles themselves had something spinning in the red bussard collectors. In Star Trek: The Animated Series it seemed to be linked to the direction of flight, spinning backwards when the ship went into reverse and slowing to a stop when it came to a halt.
    • The entire ship spins in Star Trek: Discovery when the spore drive is activated. First the saucer section's cocentric rings spin (in counter-rotating directions, no less) while the drive charges up, then the whole ship spins (around the long axis) right before it jumps.
  • In Timeless, the characters' time machine is encircled by two large chainlink-wheel structures. The more advanced machine they pursue appears to have these same wheels covered up, with lights instead.
  • Warehouse 13:
    • Possibly Lampshaded: in a show that puts the supernatural above the science, we have a computer programmer who successfully created a holographic AI in the '70s. When they find him he's in a mental hospital and has the mentality of a 5 year old, and likes to talk about the "spinning and twirling and dancing". Turns out the AI was the result of some Brain Uploading accomplished using a zoetrope, but only half his brain was uploaded. Spinning the zoetrope 1 way = upload the brain, spin it the other way = download it back into him. "When Things Spin Brain Uploads Happen"?
    • The chairs that time travelers sit in to use H.G. Wells' time machine are on a giant turntable that starts rotating when the travelers' minds are being sent back in time.

    Pinball 
  • The Molecular Mixmaster in Bally's Dr. Dude, complete with Swirly Energy Thingy.
  • The main playfield toy of Operation: Thunder is the Domed Power Plant, complete with spinning disc; players must shoot into it to strike the various targets and destroy the plant.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Aughra's gigantic orrery in The Dark Crystal. Justified, because spinning things around other things is what orreries do.
  • In Thunderbird 6, Brains's airship uses an antigravity generator that contains lots of metal hoops that rotate in opposing directions. Probably makes no sense scientifically, but provides lots of opportunities for ricochets during a climactic shootout.
  • Another Gerry Anderson example is Joe 90's "Rat Trap", a kind of spherical cage in which Joe sits while it spins rapidly around him, imprinting him with this week's brain pattern. I always wondered why it didn't make him dizzy.
  • Roberta Leigh's (associate of Anderson) puppet series Space Patrol (a.k.a. Planet Patrol) had doughnut-shaped spacecraft that were surrounded by spinning forcefields in flight. For a group of people who had to worry about things like strings getting caught, they sure did love this trope.

    Theme Parks 
  • The page image is of the Port Discovery area at Tokyo DisneySea, which is themed as a weather control station that's filled with a lot scientific objects that spin.
  • The idea behind Storm Force Accelatron at Universal's Islands of Adventure is that the guests have to spin the pods they're riding in, as doing so will power the Accelatron and magnify Storm's powers.

    Video Games 
  • ANNO: Mutationem: At the power supply station beneath Freeway 42, the main power system is activated by the use of two cylinder generators that contains lots of electrical charges that spin at immense speed to generate full power.
  • Initially played straight, but ultimately averted with the Observatory in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. The spinny bits just act as a giant projector, the important part does not only not spin, but doesn't need the spinny bit at all. It just can't create giant sized images by itself.
  • The general rule of machinery in Astroneer is this: If it spins, it works. If it spins faster, it's working faster.
  • The Ryan Industries building in BioShock contains a few rooms that feature huge spinning wheels. Presumably these are part of some mechanical equipment, but why they specifically intrude into corridors and the like seems to have no practical purpose. Knowing Ryan, the ones in Hephaestus are likely there just to show off.
  • The Ishimura in Dead Space has her artificial gravity created by a "gravity centrifuge".
  • In Earth 2160, the UCS faction's research center has a big sphere with rings around it (called a GENIUS-class processor). The rings start spinning while research is in progress; when those things spin, science happens.
  • In Fez, Gomez travels to another planet through a "star gate" made of concentric rings that whirl around as it activates. It's an obvious Shout-Out to Contact.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Each Garden in Final Fantasy VIII has a massive spinning ring that presumably keeps it in the air.
    • The airships in Final Fantasy XII; at one point, this becomes a plot point when the characters deduce that an airship is about to crash because its "glossair rings are stopping".
  • Science cruisers, AWACS, subspace portals, and even nebula gas miners in FreeSpace all have very prominent spinning widgets.
  • Half-Life
    • The Tau Cannon (a.k.a. Gauss Gun) has a set of rotors that spin up to speed as the secondary fire mode is charged. Partially justified as it seems to be some sort of electromagnet contraptionnote .
    • Also the anti-mass spectrometer,note  which has several parts that must spin for it to work.
    • Not to mention the Combine Interdimensional Portal, the subject of the page quote. The final portion has spinning shields which Gordon has to destroy.
    • Every advanced technology ever really just has to have spinning parts, including the Black Mesa/Resistance/Nova Prospekt teleporters, the displacer gun, the Citadel's core containment system, Black Mesa's generators and reactors, Xen rocks, and even parts of GLaDOS. Don't forget the spinning blade contraptions of Ravenholm as well.
  • The Mass Relays on Mass Effect are giant glowing gyroscopes In Space.
  • In Mega Man X: Command Mission, at the top of Central Tower is the Resistance headquarters. In there is a great big computer, and you can notice a number of spinning things throughout the room that make it operate. (Early in the game, you even find a techie repairing the central spinner underneath the main computer console.)
  • In Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, there's a room with a couple of large rings spinning around a giant ball of energy in the center because the spinning has made so much science that it has gone mad and you must stop it by making the rings not spinning and the scary energy ball goes away.
  • Persona:
    • When Persona 3's Aigis activates her Orgia Mode, the headphone-like disks on the side of her head spin with a loud whirring sound and emit a thin wisp of smoke. Possibly justified if they happen to be fans, or other kind of cooling device.
    • Discussed and Averted in Persona 4, in which Kanji is upset that the medical tests the party undergoes did not include being placed in a centrifuge.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, large spinning external reel-to-reel tape drives are how you know computers are working.
  • Teleporters from Team Fortress 2 are a prime example: They become ready to use when they're up to full speed. The upgraded ones accelerate to full speed faster.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Plenty of Dwemer ruins contain things that spin, or need to be spun in order to progress the plot.
  • Starbound: Space stations often feature a vertical spinning cylinder device, usually standing in the middle of the hallway. From the descriptions, it's not entirely certain if it actually does anything other than look sciency. There's also a mod that lets you build a cool-looking device to put on your ship; when you move your ship, it spins (and when you go FTL in order to reach another star, it spins even more, with little fans and lights and stuff).

    Web Animation 
  • Homestar Runner spoofs this in the Parody Commercial "Coach Z's 110%":
    "My whole deal's backed up with actual scientific findings and rotating computer graphics, so you know it's legit!"

    Web Comics 
  • Lampshaded in an episode of Concerned:
    "...and if science has taught me anything, it's that if something is spinning, it's important.
  • Drive (Dave Kellett): It's not clear how the Ring Drive works (all we know is that it's really cold in there), but since it's apparently ring-shaped by necessity, there's likely spinning involved.
  • xkcd:

    Western Animation 
  • Arcane: League of Legends: Viktor and Jayce use a spinning device to unleash the hextech crystal's power.
  • Castlevania: The Schizo Tech discovered beneath a church utilizes spinning to power up their artifacts. Since it's the first time anyone in the church have discovered and heard of marvels beyond their understanding, it doesn't take much to mistake them for witchcraft.
  • Justice League and Unlimited used this on occasion.
    • In "Legends", exploding Humongous Mecha + the Flash running in a circle = teleportation to an alternate universe.
    • In "Divided We Fall", Lex Luthor and Brainiac use nanobots to fuse their mind and body into one entity. Then the Flash separates them by making his arms two whirling blurs of motion and shoving them into Brainithors chest.
  • On Superfriends, spinning was practically the universal solution.
  • In Futurama, the heads of jurists spin when deciding on a verdict in court. In another episode Professor Farnsworth creates the "Maternifuge" to act as a Daddy DNA Test by spinning the suspected parents and ejecting anyone who isn't related. How it works this out is never explained.
  • Jay's father Franklin in The Critic built something that had a bunch of babies spinning for his experiment. Turns out he invented the baby wurl-a-majig.
  • The Phineas and Ferb episode "Primal Perry" specifically refers back to this very article when Baljeet is inside a spinning machine made by P&F for plot reasons.
    Buford: Is science happening yet?
    Baljeet: [from inside the machine] I am getting Nauseated!
    Buford: [smug] Sounds like science to me.

    Real Life 
  • Even today, most electricity is, in fact, generated via spinning turbines. Wind power? Wind spinning a turbine. Hydroelectric power? Water and gravity spinning turbines. Thermal electric plants? Radioactive material or burning fuel generate heat that boils water and makes steam, which runs through a pressurized course and spins turbines along the way. The turbine then spins a dynamo, and electric current is generated.
  • What's the fundamental difference between a dynamo and an electric motor? Which way is the energy going. Electric motors are basically electric current being exerted to cause motion (the reverse of a dynamo). A rotational electric motor has the same basic components as a dynamo: a magnet, a coil, and a rotor shaft.
  • Spinning "throbbers" like the Beach Ball of Mac OS X, spinning hula hoop in Windows Vista and above, hourglass in XP and earlier, and partial circle used in YouTube and other Google properties, all invoke this trope. They're just looping videos played for the user's amusement, and indicate that the computer has acknowledged the request and is working on it.
  • Any number of supposed "perpetual motion" machines with spinning components.
    • The Dean Drive perhaps. Or not, if the laws of physics have a say in the matter.
    • Or the opposite, so that the "Rolls Royce" logo on the hub remains visible even when the wheel is turning.
  • This trope also has a basis in the mechanical machines that until recently were the technological norm; based on mechanical simple machines, these typically have many rotating parts. In particular, in a Clockpunk or Steampunk setting, this is to be expected.
    • Centrifugal governors consist of two weights on hinges on an axle. When the engine starts up, the axle spins around and centrifugal forces cause the weights to swing in and out, regulating the speed of the engine. The net effect to the bystander, though, is to have a little propeller-looking doohicky that has no obvious function.
      • This is where the term "Going balls out" comes from. Not from not wearing undies, but from operating at maximum speed.
      • This is referenced in the Discworld novel Small Gods. One inventive character has constructed a primitive steam engine - similar to Heron of Alexandria's, described below - and mounted it on a small boat. Long story short, it's hit by lightning in a storm, overheats, and explodes. The inventor talks about the need for something to prevent excess pressure building up,
      "[...]some sort of governor device. I feel I could do something with a pair of revolving balls."
      "Funnily enough, when that lightning bolt hit, the thing started glowing, and we went scudding across the water, I distinctly felt my-"
  • Imparting a spin on any projectile stabilizes its flight path and may even direct it more or less predictably. Applications include...
    • Rifling in guns stabilizes the bullet, making it more accurate at longer ranges and allowing for cooler slow-mo shots.
    • Most balls in sports where the ball is airborne. It can either cause it to go straight or curve in an arc. Or bounce rather oddly.
  • Gyroscopes.
  • The very first steam engine. No, not Watt's note . The ones built by Hero (or Heron) of Alexandria (AD 10-AD 70) A bronze sphere on an axle, connected to a water tank itself set above a fire. The steam rises from the tank and into the sphere, and then exits through nozzles pointed in opposite directions. The sphere turns, and science happens
  • Let's not forget flywheels! Spinning wheels that are used for stability. These have become very useful in space probes.
    • Although if you use one to power a railgun, it's more like "When things very suddenly stop spinning, science happens!"
  • The Tipler Cylinder. When this baby spins up, you're gonna see some serious shit. Because it's a time machine. To be fair, it would actually have to be infinitely long to possess this property, but aside from that, it's hard to get more science-from-spin than a time machine powered by spinning.
  • Rotating black holes can theoretically do the same thing, but they'd have to be infinitely old and you'd have to be a single particle in order to actually reach the closed timelike curves without getting vaporized by the mass instability at the inner horizon. Otherwise, you slam into other stuff that fell into the black hole before you (including your own body parts) with such an energetic collision that every particle in your body becomes a mini-black hole.
  • Rotating black holes also possess ergospheres, regions of space where the black hole's incredible gravity and spin makes it impossible not to move in the same direction as the black hole spins. The name wasn't chosen for nothing; the ergosphere may potentially be used as a source of near-limitless energy in the future, as objects with sufficient velocity can escape, drawing a small amount of energy (by the standards of the black hole) in the process.
  • Particle accelerators (synchrotrons and other circular accelerators at least) literally make science happen by spinning things. Admittedly very small things that you can't actually see spinning.
  • How do you get Artificial Gravity in real life? Why, you spin your space station or ship, of course! You can also spin just part of your ship, but given Conservation of Angular Momentum, spinning part of your ship will cause the rest of your ship to start spinning in the opposite direction. SCIENCE! Which is why you set up two of them, counter-rotating, to cancel out most or all of said spin. Then you use gyroscopes (MORE SPINNING) to correct for any remaining spin.
  • Centrifuges! an essential tool of chemistry and biochemistry, because spinning a tube a several thousand cycles per minutes can separate liquids of slightly different densities in mere minutes instead of hours, days or weeks if allowed to happen through gravity alone.
  • The screw. Just its shape can drill holes, move matter, and secure things. The screw (and its derivatives) is used in so many applications it's very easy to take it for granted. For that matter, drills and lathes too.
  • Take a tour through a science lab and note the responses of the tourists. The $5,000 PCR thermocycling machine that can duplicate DNA samples thousands of times an hour? It's a box. The $20,000 mass spectrometer that can tell you the elemental contents of any sample? It's a box. But the magnetic stir bar? The quaint little contraption that costs less than $10, is one of the most mundane and regularly used devices in the room, and whose only function is to be a glorified mixer? Coolest. Thing. Ever.
  • Euler's Disk (pronounced "Oiler", not "Yoo-ler") is a spinning coin toy that uses inertia to keep spinning longer and faster as it goes, eventually the kinetic energy causes it to rumble and spin at ridiculous velocity before eventually coming to an abrupt stop.
  • Orbit is essentially spinning, and it's often very sciencey. Double points for planetary mapping orbits (like what Google maps uses) as they involve the satellite spinning around the planet's poles and the planet spinning under them to map the whole thing.

 
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Spinning Deflector Array

The interior of the deflector dish spins as power is diverted to augment the ship's navigational deflector. Unfortunately, this also creates a centrifugal force that pins Boimler to the wall. Mariner and Tendi have to use their clothes as a rope in order to save him.

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Main / WhenThingsSpinScienceHappens

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