Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Thesis No. 1452 Study of equations for Tippe Top and related rigid bodies Nils Rutstam Department of Mathematics Linköping University, SE–581 83 Linköping, Sweden Linköping 2010 Linköping Studies in Science and Technology. Thesis No. 1452 Study of equations for Tippe Top and related rigid bodies Nils Rutstam
[email protected] www.mai.liu.se Division of Applied Mathematics Department of Mathematics Linköping University SE–581 83 Linköping Sweden ISBN 978-91-7393-298-1 ISSN 0280-7971 LIU-TEK-LIC-2010:23 Copyright © 2010 Nils Rutstam Printed by LiU-Tryck, Linköping, Sweden 2010 Abstract The Tippe Top consist of a small truncated sphere with a peg as a handle. When it is spun fast enough on its spherical part it starts to turn upside down and ends up spinning on the peg. This counterintuitive behaviour, called inversion, is a curious feature of this dynamical system that has been studied for some time, but obtaining a complete description of the dynamics of inversion has proved to be a difficult problem. The existing results are either numerical simulations of the equations of mo- tion or asymptotic analysis that shows that the inverted position is the only attractive and stable position under certain conditions. This thesis will present methods to analyze the equations of motion of the Tippe Top, which we study in three equivalent forms that each helps us to un- derstand different aspects of the inversion phenomenon. Our study of the Tippe Top also focuses on the role of the underlying as- sumptions in the standard model for the external force, and what consequences these assumptions have, in particular for the asymptotic cases.