Final frontier fidgeting: Astronauts perform spinner tricks in space (VIDEO)
NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station have introduced the world’s most popular toy to outer space. Fidget spinners, and the tricks they’re used for, are even more mesmerizing when normal gravitational limits are left behind.
“A fidget spinner in space!”
The description of the YouTube video, uploaded by NASA’s Johnson Space Center on Friday, kind of says it all.
“How long does it spin? I'm not sure,” astronaut Randy Bresnik said, “but it’s a great way to experiment with Newton’s laws of motion!”
Along with Bresnik, fellow astronauts Joseph Acaba, Paolo Nespoli and Mark T. Vande Hei play with the NASA-branded fidget spinner in the minute-long video. Fidgeting and space technology don’t usually go together, but no harm was done in passing a little bit of time orbiting Earth.
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“Allowing the fidget spinner to float reduces the bearing friction by permitting the rate of the central ring and outer spinner to equalize, and the whole thing spins as a unit,” Bresnik explained in the video description.
Maybe the video will get more kids to look up, if just for a moment, while they’re spinning their fidget spinners.
