ASTROJAX - THE FREE-DIMENSIONAL ORBITER While games like diabolo or yo-yo have been around for hundreds of years, Astrojax is an entirely new breed of toy, a revolutionary concept with possibilities we are only just starting to understand.Every da...
ASTROJAX - THE FREE-DIMENSIONAL ORBITER While games like diabolo or yo-yo have been around for hundreds of years, Astrojax is an entirely new breed of toy, a revolutionary concept with possibilities we are only just starting to understand.Every day Astrojax players around the world are discovering new tricks and exciting moves we didn't even think were possible. And word is spreading fast that Astrojax is what the real cracks are now playing - a game all about action, rhythm and your own personal style.
Like most great ideas, Astrojax actually seems surprisingly simple: Three weighted balls attached by a piece of string with the middle ball freely moving. Yet the construction of Astrojax is very sophisticated. Each ball has a precision-machined metal weight to provide maximum performance and smooth action while playing. The fast spinning motion of the balls is based on the physical principles of rotational dynamics.
Features
The new AJ TUNING KITS let you create your personal Astrojax. Each set comes with two balls in new colors, three extra strings with at least one neon day-glow string for spectacular "laser" effects when playing under UV-light. The clever Pin Popper lets you easily remove the pins and change strings and balls in a matter of seconds. See how it works in the little animation below. The SATURN Special Edition (Coming soon) contains two exclusive balls with extra bright blue and white LEDs!
Additional Information
Astrojax is a fascinating new toy illustrating a wide variety of basic science principles.
PLANETARY/ORBITAL MOTION During vertical orbits the outer ball orbits around the middle ball. However, just as with the orbital motion of the earth and moon, neither ball is still - both balls are in motion. During horizontal orbits, both balls orbit in perfect circles. Our earth orbits around the sun and our moon orbits around the earth in ellipses which are not quite circular, but close!
ROTATIONAL DYNAMICS A metal weight concentrates the mass at the center of the middle ball. This allows the middle ball to spin rapidly. (A diver uses the same principle when she tucks into a ball during a dive so she can spin faster. Similarly, an ice skater uses this principle when he brings in his arms during a twirl to spin faster.) Because the middle ball can spin rapidly, the string never tangles around the middle ball!
FRICTION During horizontal orbits the middle ball does not slide on the string, so energy is not lost to friction. This is why horizontal orbits last a long time without any hand motion. However, during vertical orbits the center ball does slide up and down on the string. (If you listen closely you can hear it sliding.) Therefore energy is lost to friction, and vertical orbits require tugs of the hand to add energy to sustain the orbits.
CENTRIFUGAL FORCE As the velocity of the horizontal orbits increases, the string attached to the end ball becomes more and more horizontal. As the string becomes more horizontal, it can exert more inwards force on the end ball. This illustrates that the inward force required to produce circular orbits increases as the velocity of the orbits increases.
