Why does a yoyo sleep

I am going to address them in this order, so if you know what kind of yoyo you have, you can just skip ahead in the video and try to find the section where I talk about the yoyo that you have. The four types of yoyos I am going to talk about are cheap yoyos that you might get at a dollar store, or something like that. Fixed axle yoyos, these are any yoyos that are made of wood, or your less expensive Duncan yoyos like the Butterfly or Imperials, something like that.

Then I am going to be talking about Brain yoyos, and finally ball bearing yoyos. The first yoyo that may not sleep when you get it is what I just call a cheap yoyo. This is something you get at a dollar store, or if you go to some sort of event like a car show, and they give away yoyos for free, with General Motors or Ford written on it.

This is a yoyo that you have not paid that much money for. Maybe somebody gave you a yoyo as a gift and there is no logo at all on the side of the yoyo, almost like the company is too embarrassed to own up to the fact that they made this product.

All of these types of cheap yoyos may not sleep at all. So, if you want to start learning tricks on YoTricks. We have all kinds of yoyos for players of all different skill levels. We suggest that you check those out.

The next type of yoyo is, you may have gotten a fixed-axle yoyo. The Lightening Yoyo , this is a wood yoyo that we carry on YoTricks, this is a fixed-axle yoyo.

Any yoyo that has a wood axle, also your Butterfly yoyo, your Imperial yoyo, your inexpensive, common Duncan yoyos. Not all Duncan yoyos, but the less expensive ones that you might find at a drug store, or a grocery store, something like that. These yoyos, if you get one of these, they should be able to sleep.

A lot of times when you first get a yoyo like this it sleeps and it is just fine, and then as you are using it and as you are using it over time, all of a sudden it will just stop sleeping.

What may have happened is your string may have gotten too tight. You can know if this is what happened if the string has gotten like this. What that means is that the string has gotten wrapped so tightly around the axle that it is no longer free to spin freely.

We have a trick called the UFO that you can learn that can help you loosen the string so that the yoyo can sleep again. Just like that. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why does a Yo-Yo sleep, and then awaken? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 5 months ago. Active 5 years, 2 months ago. Viewed 6k times. Improve this question. They slept and awakened just fine.

It is not internal structure that is primarily responsible. The axle was threaded onto the plastic ends, hence opening one up. The glue made it rather difficult to open one up. They slept just fine unless the string was twisted not wound too tightly, and there was plenty of time to do cradles and such. However, I do think the exact sequence of events that occur with a flick that awakens the Yo-Yo bears further scrutiny.

Perhaps that is a separate question. Also the following sudden decrease is important, and likely the dynamics are complex. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Simon S Simon S 5 5 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges.

When you flick your wrist, the tension on the string is removed and the friction of the metal shaft is sufficient to wind the string. Ordinary string and wood or plastic are brought to life!

This may seem like magic, but it's actually just physics at work. In this article, we'll examine these principles to find out what makes yo-yos behave in such an unexpected way. We'll also look at the history of yo-yos and see how they've changed through the years.

The yo-yo is one of the most popular and enduring toys of all time. The ancient Greeks were playing with them more than 2, years ago, and there's some evidence that the Chinese had developed similar toys before that. In any case, the yo-yo has demonstrated phenomenal longevity -- it's older than any other toy except the doll. There have been several variations on the yo-yo design through the years. In the original design, which was still popular until the early 20th century, the string was tied securely to the axle.

This design achieved huge popularity in Europe in the 18th and 19th century, where it had a number of names, including bandelore , quiz and L'emigrette. In the modern yo-yo, brought to the United States from the Philippines in the s see below , the string is only looped around the axle. To understand the significance of this difference, let's examine the physical principles at work in both sorts of yo-yos.

In both designs, the yo-yoist winds the string tightly around the axle. Sitting in the yo-yoist's palm, the yo-yo has a certain amount of potential energy energy of position. This potential energy takes two different forms:.

When the yo-yo is released, both forms of potential energy change to kinetic energy. The yo-yo spool falls straight to the ground, which builds a certain amount of linear momentum momentum in a straight line. At the same time, the string unwinds, and the spool spins, which builds angular momentum momentum of rotation. When the yo-yo reaches the end of the string, it can't fall any farther. But, because it has a good deal of angular momentum, it will keep spinning.

The spinning motion gives the yo-yo gyroscopic stability. A spinning object resists changes to its axis of rotation because an applied force moves along with the object itself. If you push on a point at the top of a spinning wheel, for example, that point moves around to the front of the wheel while it is still feeling the force you applied. As the point of force keeps moving, it ends up applying force on opposite ends of the wheel -- the force balances itself out.

This phenomenon keeps a yo-yo's axis perpendicular to the string, as long as the yo-yo is spinning fast enough. See How Gyroscopes Work to learn more. If the string is attached securely to the axle, as in the original design, the spinning axle will grip the string and start rewinding it; the yo-yo will travel back up the string.

The yo-yoist must give a slight tug on the string as the yo-yo rewinds, in order to compensate for the energy lost to friction. In the modern yo-yo, there is less friction between the string and the axle, since the string is only looped around the axle. When the spool completely unwinds, it will not automatically grip the spring -- it will simply spin freely.

To get the yo-yo to rewind , the yo-yoist jerks on the string a little bit. This tug briefly increases the friction between the string and the axle so that the axle starts rewinding the string.

Once it starts rewinding, this sort of yo-yo will return to the yo-yoist just like the older design. The ability to make the yo-yo spool spin on the end of its string, or " sleep ," made yo-yoing a much more interesting challenge.

Yo-yoists try to keep the spool sleeping while making shapes with the string and swinging the yo-yo around them.

Another trick is to " walk the dog " -- let the spinning spool roll along the ground before pulling it back in. Over the years, manufacturers have come up with a number of mechanisms to make it easier to do these sorts of tricks. In the next section, we'll check out a few of the more popular variations found in modern yo-yos. The word "yo-yo" and the modern yo-yo design come from the Philippines. Unlike the original Chinese and Greek yo-yos, Philippine yo-yos the word means "come come" or "come back" in the native Tagalog language had the ability to "sleep.

In any case, it dates back at least a few hundred years in the region. In the s, a Philippine immigrant named Pedro Flores decided to bring this yo-yo design to the United States.

He achieved some success right away, and in , he sold his company to a businessman named Donald Duncan. Duncan trademarked the name "yo-yo" and, over the next few decades, built his company up into the premiere yo-yo manufacturer.