tippe top

plural tippe tops · alternative tippy top

1. A spinning top of a shape with counterintuitive behavior: generally mushroomlike or spherical, with a rounded head and a short stem; when spun head-down on a smooth, flat surface, it inverts its attitude so that it spins head-up, on the tip of the stem, until it loses momentum and falls over.

   On a flat surface, the tippe top will rest stably with its stem up. However, spun fast enough on its blunt end, the tippe top momentarily defies gravity, inverts, and spins on its stem until dissipation causes it to slow down and then fall over.

   2008 January, Nawaf M. Bou-Rabee, Jerrold E. Marsden, Louis A. Romero, “Dissipation-Induced Heteroclinic Orbits in Tippe Tops”, in SIAM Review, volume 50, number 2, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 325–344