Comments by "Jeff Huffman" (@tejing2001) on "The Bizarre Behavior of Rotating Bodies" video.

  1. After mulling this over for a bit, I realized there's an issue with this explanation: as stated, it seems to apply just as well to the principal axis with the smallest moment of inertia. For a complete intuition, you would need to understand why it DOESN'T happen there. I believe the answer to that question will probably center around the coriolis force on the 'flipping' mass, and how the torque from that affects the primary rotation. That torque should be small in comparison to the primary rotation's angular momentum in the intermediate axis case, but large in the smallest axis case.
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  2. Rotational dynamics are perhaps the most persistently unintuitive thing in physics, but this penetrated that at least a bit. Well done.
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