Customer Reviews

Rattleback Space Pets - One Space Pet

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful toy that will absolutely dazzle your fellow engineers or scientists. I had a physicist in my office who watched me spin the rattleback and he actually got out of his chair, exclaiming "That's not possible!". He spent the next ten minutes examining this innocuous piece of plastic, looking for the mechanism that would allow it to violate the laws of physics.

Needless to say, I get a lot of mileage out of these toys.

Please be advised: If you order more than one of these via Amazon, they will stick you with a shipping charge for each item as if each item were being packaged separately (they came in one small box). So the six or eight dollar charge it should have been ended up over $59 for ten small pieces of plastic!

It looks like an ordinary piece of plastic...but amazes me with what it does. I don't understand the physics, but I've astonished kids who are in my office with their parents. How DOES it do that?

This thing is great. I'd seen one years ago and then forgot about it. Then one day I was asking my wife if she'd ever seen one and she'd never heard of it. Well then, now she was getting one! I ordered one, knowing that the color was "luck of the draw", and to my surprise the one that came was purple (my wife's favorite color). So we liberated it from it's packaging and spun it on the dining room table. Ok, so what? Then she spun it the other direction and after a couple of rotations it became unstable, wobbled crazily, and then spun gently in the opposite direction. It really makes you go "HUH?". Great fun.
We took it with us to her parents house later and really had fun watching the looks on thier faces when it "did its trick".
That was after we explained what it would do. Next time I show it to someone I'm not telling them anything first. I'm just going to say "Hey, watch this."
We also found a secondary use for it besides the regular "bar trick". It's fun to just spin it while you're doing something else, much like how you would twirl a pencil, or drum your fingers on the desk.

Go on, try to figure it out! This toy will drive scientifically minded people to distraction trying to come up with an explanation for how it works! Great for the rest of us too as it's fun to watch and fun to spin!

It's true. The darn thing has a preferred direction of spin. You can tell that it has something to do with the shape of the curved side, and you'll try to explain how it does what it does in your mind, but unless you're a bonefied genius, you'll never be completely sure about exactly how it operates. I'll occasionally sit and flick this thing over and over again for disturbingly long periods of time, and never lose fascination. It's so simple, and yet so perplexing. Like trying to understand why hard concrete darkens when you pour water on it. It's consistant, it's simple, and it's right in front of me, but I always have to face the fact, eventually, that I quite simply don't get it. Get one. If nothing else, it's a unique lucky charm.

I bought two sets of rattlebacks. The first set was for 5 - two shipped to me and the other three shipped to different grandchildren. The second set was also for five, but when they arrived there were 10 - 2 in each package, so the second set was a lot less expensive than the first. Next time I'll take a closer look at what I buy.

The rattle back works based on very complicated dynamics laws. It's motion is studied by many scientists and few of them could come up with exact explanation.
It catches the eyes the first time it rotates, but it loses its appeal for someone not deep into physics. Can be an inspiring toy!