Look! Amazing Balancing Dragonfly

This past weekend we visited reader, Mason Fung, at home in Los Angeles to shoot his amazing apartment for our newest book project on small spaces. Mason had this dragonfly on his desk that seemed to defy gravity, and we had to blog it. We challenge anyone to try and DIY this. It's the simplest, coolest balancing toy we've seen.

Comments (6)

I remember buying a bird shaped toy like that at a state fair :-)

I made a paper bird version of that in elementary school. It's all about balancing the wings with the rest of the body.

I watched it and it looks like the beak is holding it on the stand, no?

Not sure, but it reminds me of this mathematical problem: Book Stacking

It's a matter of physics, but maybe that's a duh. The first time I saw something like this, at a science fair, I was pretty awed too. The weight of the dragon fly is equal to the weight of the stand, or something like that ;)

Here's a not-as-pretty science experiment that kind of explains it:

http://www.unplugyourkids.com/2009/01/18/flying-balancing-bird/