[Physics] the physics of a spinning coin

frictionnewtonian-mechanicsprecessionrigid-body-dynamicsrotational-dynamics

When we spin a coin on a table, we observe 2 things:

  1. It slows down and stops after sometime.

  2. It does not stay at just one point on the table but its point of contact with table changes with time.

I was trying to explain quantitatively this but I am stuck at how to take frictional torques into account. Any help will be appreciated.

Best Answer

I think that if you spin "perfectly" (i.e., such that the rotational axis is normal to the surface and goes through he centre of the coin), is only a rotation movement with friction. This motion is unstable though, so, the axis tilt a little bit and this cause a rotation in the axis itself, the precession. The point of contact will be moving with the precession, maybe you can calculate its position by geometrical arguments, although it should be a circular/spiral/cycloid movement (if you see in the coin a movement towards a given direction, this is solely because of the way you made if spin or the coin or because the table has a tilt or imperfections).

I don't know your level of knowledge, but for a complete description you need knowledge of Hamiltonian dynamics, rigid body and Euler angles, so basically a course of classical (a.k.a. analytical) mechanics. A very common, related, problem is the problem of the spinning top, the difference here is that the contact point is material, so there you have to see if you have to see if the contact point slips or not (if not, it creates a rotation in the axis normal to the coin).

Personally I think that it is a complicated but somehow treatable problem (with a lot of patience).