Wednesday, May 4, 2011

BASF rattleback pen

Do you know what a rattleback is?
Well, once I bought a piece of plastic made to have that type of behaviour. Nowadays I can't find it, but yesterday I discovered a everyday device that has the same behaviour.
I happen to have a ballpoint pen made by Schneider in Germany for BASF. And this pen has the behaviour of a rattleback. That means that if it is spun in the "wrong" direction, it will stop and reverse its spin to the preferred direction.
Just look at my short footage of the phenomenon:



I will not try to explaing what happens, but the Internet is full of material if you look for it. On the other hand some questions appear, like;
  • Is Schneider aware of this ?
  • Was this behaviour specified by BASF?
  • Or am I the first to observe this?

1 comment:

  1. Z grip flight's pen clips if torn off are pretty good rattlebacks

    ReplyDelete

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