Comments on: Gomboc

Gomboc

gleuschk — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:02:35 -0800

The Gömböc is the first known convex, homogeneous shape having just one stable and one unstable point (i.e. altogether two points) of equilibrium. A little like some turtles' shells (or weebles), it's self-righting, but for purely geometric reasons. You can have your very own personal Gömböc -- for a price. Made in a limited series, numbered 001-2007, the models (manufactured to 0.01mm precision) are variably priced. Gömböc "X" sells for EUR (900 + 200 000/X).

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:28:50 -0800

You can have your very own personal Gömböc -- for a price. Made in a limited series, numbered 001-2007, the models (manufactured to 0.01mm precision) are variably priced. Gömböc "X" sells for EUR (900 + 200 000/X). Hmm... Feels like the wrong way to drive a limited run - the first person pays €200.900 and the last pays €999... But unless someone stumps the initially huge amount, none of the cheaper ones will sell either. Swapping it around would at least mean some cheaper (and growingly expensive ones) would sell until the maximum price the market was prepared to pay was reached...

By: you

you — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:35:29 -0800

benzo: They're selling them out of order. I think I'll hold off until the local exploratorium starts selling them in the gift shop.

By: MrVisible

MrVisible — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:40:01 -0800

For now, I'll just buy a weeble. By the way, your weeble link fell down.

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:40:15 -0800

Ah, fair enough. In that case, they'll most likely just sell in reverse order until the maximum price the market was preparec... etc.

By: steef

steef — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:40:47 -0800

I like turtles. (Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, seven-page .pdf.)

By: gleuschk

gleuschk — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:41:24 -0800

Whoops: weebles. Sorry about that.

By: MrVisible

MrVisible — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:46:48 -0800

Yay! It's back up! I love weebles.

By: dragonsi55

dragonsi55 — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:50:25 -0800

Perhaps they think, regardless of where they set the price initially, it will force itself to equilibrium.

By: Bighappyfunhouse

Bighappyfunhouse — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:56:18 -0800

Q. Are you a Gomboc? A. You bet your sweet ass I am.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:02:49 -0800

Fascinating invention. I want one. Looks a bit like the Microsoft Silverlight image. Never thought about turtles rolling over before. Video of the inventors, Várkonyi Péter and Domokos Gábor, presenting Gömböc.

By: chips ahoy

chips ahoy — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:39:05 -0800

Guess it's a matter of time before we seeing the Chinese knockoffs at www.cheap-gomboc-deals.cn.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:59:51 -0800

How tortoises turn right-side up

By: Tube

Tube — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 12:00:50 -0800

The New York Times article is worthwhile. I'll bet the mono-monostatic tag stays mono for some time to come...

By: Balisong

Balisong — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 12:38:26 -0800

How long before I can order a Personal Transportation Pod shaped like one of these? (now with anti catastrophic tipping action!)

By: Anything

Anything — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 12:50:35 -0800

You can have your very own personal Gömböc Do not taunt Gömböc.

By: StickyCarpet

StickyCarpet — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 12:51:35 -0800

I'm guessing the unstable point of equilibrium is on the top edge. That doesn't mean it can't be balanced on that one, too, not if you're this guy, it doesn't.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 12:57:52 -0800

Your own... personal... gomboc. Go ahead and give it a shove, it'll roll back. Your own... personal... gomboc. Won't flip -- gomboc!

By: Anything

Anything — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 13:03:56 -0800

This is exactly the sort of thing Lovecraft dedicated his life to warning us about.

By: Anything

Anything — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 13:16:48 -0800

And at the risk of you labeling me insane for saying it explicitly, I fear that certain unmentionable multidimensional horrors are able to smell the shape.

By: ErWenn

ErWenn — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:21:22 -0800

I know that the picture on the link that homunculus posted is just a tortoise halfway through righting itself, but it looks to me like it's in the process of doing some sort of kung-fu cartwheel kick. I would not mess with that tortoise.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:00:56 -0800

That's actually a turtle. Don't call it a tortoise or it'll put a Lee Van Cleef on your bitch ass.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:06:10 -0800

Tortoise? What's that?

By: Creosote

Creosote — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:12:26 -0800

Sounds suspiciously like the Nextahedron invented by Thursday Next's brilliant uncle Mycroft, as described in Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten:

... I turned the grapefruit-sized object over in my hands. Some of the faces were odd-sided and some even-sided--and some, strangely enough, appeared to be both, and my eyes had trouble making sense of it. [...] I placed it on the surface, but the oddly shaped solid, unstable on the face I had placed it upon, tipped onto another. Then, after a moment's pause, it wobbled again and fell onto a third. It carried on in this jerky fashion across the worktop until it fell against a screwdriver, where it stopped. 160;160;160;"I call it a Nextahedron," announced Mycroft, picking up the solid. ... "Most irregular solids are only unstable on one or two faces. The Nextahedron is unstable on all its faces--it will continue to fall and tip until a solid object impedes its progress."

Naturally, the Nextahedron has a practical application as an infinite source of free power.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:06:33 -0800

Anything mathematical that also sports dual umlauts has to be good.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 18:40:41 -0800

...just like Mötörhead.

By: rokusan

rokusan — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:26:47 -0800

Tortoise? What's that? You know what a turtle is, ROU_Xenophobe? Same thing.

By: elmwood

elmwood — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:48:05 -0800

Finally ... the one-sided die.

By: raygirvan

raygirvan — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 20:26:37 -0800

This is exactly the sort of thing Lovecraft dedicated his life to warning us about Yes, beware of the Gömböc

By: agentofselection

agentofselection — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:36:08 -0800

I thought of the one sided die, but my girlfriend was like "Why?" So I said "Fine, we can write "20" on top of yours, and 1-19 around the other faces.

By: pravit

pravit — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:11:43 -0800

That gomboc.eu page doesn't load for me.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:45:42 -0800

I'd be more entertained by this if it weren't for the fact that they're looking for a bloody fortune in exchange for one.

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 02:48:52 -0800

Would an egg or egg-like shape not also satisfy these requirements? I saw the diagrams in the paper of the shape and they seem overly complex; why aren't the surfaces smooth? (They seem to have bulges in them, hard to tell if they're regular or not and I'm a bit tired to look at the math.) I can understand why the turtle's shell is irregular -- by being irregular, and avoiding having a blow land normal to the shell, it effectively increases the shell's thickness (much like angled armor plate on the front of a tank) -- but the self-righting properties of the overall shape are hindered, not helped, by the irregularities. A smooth surface would self-right better, or just as well.

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:13:33 -0800

An egg won't naturally rest on one point. (OK, I think a factor here is consistent density - if you were to put all the weight in the larger end of an egg, it probably would.) It will have a circle around the shell along which is would roll until inertia allowed it to come to rest - the point would not be fixed and singular.

By: oats

oats — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:32:22 -0800

In case anyone is wondering, it's pronounced more or less like "gumbutts", but with more umlautiness, and the accent on the second syllable.

By: raygirvan

raygirvan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:20:02 -0800

Yep: "gəmbəts". Although if the pronunication in the folktale vid is typical, the emphasis is about equal.