Journey into Maths Country - Season 2 Episode 9 Kovaleskaya's Spinning Top or The Best Way to Spin
8.5010 minutes
How do you model the movement of a potato in space? Many a mathematician has struggled with this question.
At the end of the 19th century, mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya finally obtained an important result for determining the motion of a solid around a fixed point, thanks to a very special spinning top. A little expedition to the heart of integrable systems, even if it's a bit dizzying...