How can you make a top out of a paper clip? This is easy to do with your hands but a bit more difficult to calculate. It is a challenging job in a class and a not-so-entertaining task in a student examination. The paper clip top is a nice application of physics and mathematics principles (1).
How to make a wobbler out of two flat discs? They can be described as two-circle rollers, too. This is also easy to do but difficult to calculate. No calculation is necessary to create aesthetic objects using the principle of a two-circle-roller. Artists and designers have already done this.
Topics like these are interesting for physics faculties to motivate students and for teachers to handle the interplay between experiment and theory while stimulating interdisciplinary connections between physics, mathematics and art.
1) Ucke, C.: Professor Sakais’s Paper-Clip Tops, Physics Education (India) 19, No. 2 (2002), 97-100