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Roly-poly Toy
A roly-poly toy, round-bottomed doll, tilting doll, tumbler, wobbly man, or wobble doll is a round-bottomed toy, usually egg-shaped, that tends to right itself when pushed at an angle, and does this in seeming contradiction to how it should fall. The toy is typically hollow with a weight inside the bottom hemisphere. The placement of this weight is such that the toy has a center of mass below the center of the hemisphere, so that any tilting raises the center of mass. When such a toy is pushed over, it wobbles for a few moments while it seeks the upright orientation, which has an equilibrium at the minimum gravitational potential energy. Different toy manufacturers and different cultures have produced different-looking roly-poly toys: the '' okiagari-koboshi'' and some types of Daruma doll of Japan, the ''nevаlyashka'' ("untopply") or ''van'ka-vstan'ka'' ("Ivan-get-up") of Russia, and Playskool's Weebles. Japanese ''okiagari'' means "to get up (''oki'') and arise (''agari'')"; t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motor Skill
A motor skill is a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task. These tasks could include walking, running, or riding a bike. In order to perform this skill, the body's nervous system, muscles, and brain have to all work together. The goal of motor skill is to optimize the ability to perform the skill at the rate of success, precision, and to reduce the energy consumption required for performance. Performance is an act of executing a motor skill or task. Continuous practice of a specific motor skill will result in a greatly improved performance, which leads to Motor Learning. Motor learning is a relatively permanent change in the ability to perform a skill as a result of continuous practice or experience. Types of motor skills Motor skills are movements and actions of the muscles. There are two major groups of motor skills: * Gross motor skills – require the use of large muscle groups in our legs, torso, and arms to perform tasks suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Toys
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes (like lawyers' wigs or military officers' spurs), but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings. Traditions can persist and evolve for thousands of years—the word ''tradition'' itself derives from the Latin ''tradere'' literally meaning to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. While it is commonly assumed that traditions have an ancient history, many traditions have been invented on purpose, whether that be political or cultural, over short periods of time. Various academic disciplines also use the word in a variety of ways. The phrase "according to tradition", or "by tradition", usually means that whatever information follows is known only by oral tradition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monostatic Polytope
In geometry, a monostatic polytope (or unistable polyhedron) is a ''d''-polytope which "can stand on only one face". They were described in 1969 by J.H. Conway, M. Goldberg, R.K. Guy and K.C. Knowlton. The monostatic polytope in 3-space constructed independently by Guy and Knowlton has 19 faces. In 2012, Andras Bezdek discovered an 18 face solution, and in 2014, Alex Reshetov published a 14 face object. Definition A polytope is called monostatic if, when filled homogeneously, it is stable on only one facet. Alternatively, a polytope is monostatic if its centroid (the center of mass) has an orthogonal projection in the interior of only one facet. Properties * No convex polygon in the plane is monostatic. This was shown by V. Arnold via reduction to the four-vertex theorem. * There are no monostatic simplices in dimension up to 8. In dimension 3 this is due to Conway. In dimension up to 6 this is due to R.J.M. Dawson. Dimensions 7 and 8 were ruled out by R.J.M. Dawson, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gömböc
The Gömböc ( ) is the first known physical example of a class of convex three-dimensional homogeneous bodies, called mono-monostatic, which, when resting on a flat surface have just one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium. The existence of this class was conjectured by the Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold in 1995 and proven in 2006 by the Hungarian scientists Gábor Domokos and Péter Várkonyi by constructing at first a mathematical example and subsequently a physical example. Mono-monostatic shapes exist in countless varieties, most of which are close to a sphere, with a stringent shape tolerance (about one part in a thousand). Gömböc is the first mono-monostatic shape which has been constructed physically. It has a sharpened top, as shown in the photo. Its shape helped to explain the body structure of some tortoises in relation to their ability to return to an equilibrium position after being placed upside down. Copies of the Gömböc have been donate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bobo Doll Experiment
The Bobo doll experiment (or experiments) is the collective name for a series of experiments performed by psychologist Albert Bandura to test his social learning theory. Between 1961 and 1963, he studied children's behavior after watching an adult model act aggressively towards a Bobo doll. The most notable variation of the experiment measured the children's behavior after seeing the adult model rewarded, punished, or experience no consequence for physically abusing the Bobo doll. The social learning theory proposes that people learn largely through observation, imitation, and modeling. It demonstrates that people learn not only by being rewarded or punished, but they can also learn from watching someone else being rewarded or punished. These studies have practical implications, such as providing evidence of how children can be influenced by watching violent media. Experiment of 1960 Method The participants in these experiments consisted of 72 children from the Stan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clown
A clown is a person who performs comedy and arts in a state of open-mindedness using physical comedy, typically while wearing distinct makeup or costuming and reversing folkway-norms. History The most ancient clowns have been found in the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, around 2400 BC. Unlike court jesters, clowns have traditionally served a socio-religious and psychological role, and traditionally the roles of priest and clown have been held by the same persons. Peter Berger writes, "It seems plausible that folly and fools, like religion and magic, meet some deeply rooted needs in human society." For this reason, clowning is often considered an important part of training as a physical performance discipline, partly because tricky subject matter can be dealt with, but also because it requires a high level of risk and play in the performer. In anthropology, the term ''clown'' has been extended to comparable jester or fool characters in non-Western cultures. A society in which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playdays
''Playdays'' (known as ''Playbus'' until December 1989) is a British pre-school television programme which ran from 1988 to 1997 on CBBC. The show was the successor to '' Play School'' and, like its predecessor, was designed as an educational programme. The show's name was changed after the BBC received a complaint from the National Playbus Association. In 2002, reruns were moved to the new CBeebies channel until August 2004. The stops The show would begin with an animated title sequence of the Playbus driving along until it reached the bus stop. The bus stopped at a different place each day. Monday – The Why Bird Stop Why Bird lived at the Lost Property Office, where things that were left on the Playbus were filed until someone claimed them. She interacted with the human bus driver – there were several throughout the series. She had a special computer called the Why-Tech, which had a variety of uses: it could provide music for songs, pictures for stories, instructions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enid Blyton
Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English children's writer, whose books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Her books are still enormously popular and have been translated into 90 languages. As of June 2019, Blyton held 4th place for the most translated author. She wrote on a wide range of topics, including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives. She is best remembered today for her '' Noddy'', '' Famous Five'', '' Secret Seven'', the ''Five Find-Outers'', and '' Malory Towers'' books, although she also wrote many others including the '' St Clare's'', '' The Naughtiest Girl'' and '' The Faraway Tree'' series. Her first book, '' Child Whispers'', a 24-page collection of poems, was published in 1922. Following the commercial success of her early novels, such as '' Adventures of the Wishing-Chair'' (1937) and '' The Enchanted Wood'' (1939), Blyton went on to build a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noddy (character)
Noddy is an English character created by English children's author Enid Blyton. Noddy first appeared in a book series published between 1949 and 1963, illustrated by the Dutch artist Harmsen van der Beek from 1949 until his death in 1953, after which the work was continued by Peter Wienk. Television shows based on the character have run on British television since 1955. Noddy The first book explains Noddy's origins. He is made by a wood carving, woodcarver in a toy store but runs away after the man begins to make a wooden lion, which scares Noddy. As he wanders through the woods naked, penniless, and homeless, he meets Big Ears, a friendly brownie (folklore), brownie. Big Ears decides that Noddy is a toy and takes him to live in Toyland. He generously provides Noddy with a set of clothing and a house. While Noddy is quite happy to be a toy, the citizens of Toyland are not sure that he actually is one. They put Noddy on trial and examine whether he is a toy or an ornament. Eventual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mandarin (bureaucrat)
A mandarin () was a bureaucrat scholar in the history of China, Korea and Vietnam. The term is generally applied to the officials appointed through the imperial examination system; it sometimes includes the eunuchs also involved in the governance of the above realms. History and use of the term The English term comes from the Portuguese ''mandarim'' (spelled in Old Portuguese as ''mandarin,'' ). The Portuguese word was used in one of the earliest Portuguese reports about China: letters from the imprisoned survivors of the Tomé Pires' embassy, which were most likely written in 1524, and in Castanheda's ''História do descobrimento e conquista da Índia pelos portugueses'' (c. 1559). Matteo Ricci, who entered mainland China from Portuguese Macau in 1583, also said the Portuguese used the word. The Portuguese word was thought by many to be related to ''mandador'' ("one who commands") and ''mandar'' ("to command"), from Latin ''mandare''. Modern dictionaries, however, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sphere
A sphere () is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. A sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three-dimensional space.. That given point is the centre of the sphere, and is the sphere's radius. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the ancient Greek mathematicians. The sphere is a fundamental object in many fields of mathematics. Spheres and nearly-spherical shapes also appear in nature and industry. Bubbles such as soap bubbles take a spherical shape in equilibrium. The Earth is often approximated as a sphere in geography, and the celestial sphere is an important concept in astronomy. Manufactured items including pressure vessels and most curved mirrors and lenses are based on spheres. Spheres roll smoothly in any direction, so most balls used in sports and toys are spherical, as are ball bearings. Basic terminology As mentioned earlier is th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
