g\u00f6mb\u00f6c<\/a> [\u2026] is a convex three-dimensional homogeneous body which, when resting on a flat surface, has just one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nWhat does that mean? Well, it\u2019s kind of like a self-righting roly-poly toy, except that it isn\u2019t weighted; it\u2019s of uniform density throughout. But however you put it down, it rolls back to its stable equilibrium position. (Unless you put it down very carefully in its unstable equilibrium position, in which case it stays there until disturbed.)<\/p>\r\n
About the name, Wikipedia says:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nIf analyzed quantitatively in terms of flatness and thickness, the discovered mono-monostatic body is the most sphere-like body, apart from the sphere itself. Because of this, it was named g\u00f6mb\u00f6c, meaning a diminutive of g\u00f6mb (\"sphere\" in Hungarian). Originally g\u00f6mb\u00f6c is a sausage-like food: seasoned pork filled in pig-stomach, similar to haggis. There is a Hungarian folk tale about an anthropomorphic g\u00f6mb\u00f6c, which swallows several people whole.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
Apparently some tortoises have somewhat g\u00f6mb\u00f6c-like shells, allowing them to right themselves more easily.<\/p>\r\n
You can purchase a g\u00f6mb\u00f6c<\/a> in a variety of materials from the G\u00f6mb\u00f6c Webshop, but they have to be made with very fine tolerances to work properly, so they\u2019re pretty expensive\u2014on the order of \u20ac300.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-to-me-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17260,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16801\/revisions\/17260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}