I overengineered a spinning top [video]

Awesome!

At around the end of the fidget spinner craze I thought "but what would it take to make it spin by its own?" And it turned out, not much. Just put one magnet at each of the three ends, and have some pulsating magnet near it (next to it, or under it hidden in some kind of base), and there! you have a basic electric motor that seems entirely magical.

It was a really fun experiment; I even toyed with doing a small production run but by the time I was almost ready the craze had passed.

Did make me wonder if you could build a solid state one using well-timed pulses through an electromagnet that provide torque through the field interaction with the earth's magnetic field.

Not much torque available there obviously, but on a per-revolution basis you don't need much.

The material science discussion in these comments is fascinating. Never thought about how the contact point geometry matters so much. Diamond tip makes intuitive sense for hardness, but then you need something it can spin on without scratching...