University of Chicago receives mathematically fascinating Gömböc sculpture
By Adam Harrington, Edie Kasten, Traci Maloney
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CHICAGO (WBBM) — Monday marked an exciting day at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park—as the university received a beautiful gift with a complicated story.
The gift in question was a Gömböc (roughly pronounced “GUHM-buhts”) sculpture from Hungary.
In addition to being rather attractive aesthetically, the Gömböc is a mathematical wonder. As explained by the Gömböc Shop, it is the first known homogeneous object with one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium when resting on a flat surface.
What does that mean in layman’s terms?
For the point of stable equilibrium, it means no matter how the Gömböc sculpture is moved—even it put on its side—it will right itself. An equivalent concept is some tortoises that can be placed on their back and turn themselves over to right themselves.
The Gömböc Shop website compares the sculpture and how it rights itself to how Weeble toys work. But while Weeble toys have a weight on the bottom, Gömböc sculptures are homogenous—the same throughout instead of having a weight centered in one place.
It is the shape of the Gömböc, not a weight, that accounts for how the sculpture rights itself.
But then there’s the point of unstable equilibrium, on the opposite side of the Gömböc sculpture. The sculpture can be balanced in this position too, without flipping to its stable equilibrium point, but it will fall at the slightest disturbance like a pencil balanced on its tip, the Gömböc Shop explained.
UChicago noted that the mathematics and physics of the Gömböc have many applications and implications in various scientific disciplines.
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