Gee-Haw Whammy Diddle
Classical Physics
2020-04-30 v1 Popular Physics
Abstract
Gee-Haw Whammy Diddle is a seemingly simple mechanical toy consisting of a wooden stick and a second stick that is made up of a series of notches with a propeller at its end. When the wooden stick is pulled over the notches, the propeller starts to rotate. In spite of its simplicity, physical principles governing the motion of the stick and the propeller are rather complicated and interesting. Here we provide a thorough analysis of the system and parameters influencing the motion. We show that contrary to the results published on this topic so far, neither elliptic motion of the stick nor frequency synchronization is needed for starting the motion of the propeller.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1707.01129,
title = {Gee-Haw Whammy Diddle},
author = {Martin Marek and Matej Badin and Martin Plesch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.01129},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
17 pages, 10 figures