Gyroscopic motion is both fascinating and mysterious. A spinning top seems to defy gravity as it executes gyroscopic motion. In this video I explore gyroscopic motion in detail by examining the physics of a ``twotop". A twotop is a simple top constructed from two masses held together by massless struts. The failure of our intuition for gyroscopic motion is traced to a subtle misinterpretation of Newton's second law as applied to the center of mass of the top. A careful analysis of the twotop shows that the force of gravity, pulling down on its center of mass, is balanced by upward forces from the central support.

Simulations for this video were created using glowscript. The code "TwoTop" is publicly available at

https://www.glowscript.org/#/user/jay...