A note recieved today:

Tom,

I wanted to drop you a note to let you know that I enjoyed reading your “In Search of the Chrinitoid” website. I’m a recent fan of George Rickey’s work as well as other kinetic artists like George Sherwood. I have become obsessed with learning how these wonderful sculptures work. In all of your looking around did you by any chance find any books or articles that do a good job of discussing the physics involved? Clearly the “arms” are highly balanced from a weight point of view. But what I’m interested in learning is what keeps these works from “weather vanning” or stabilizing in the wind. I tried making a small piece of my own. It has two arms that are weight balanced. It will move with the wind but then stabilize. Not moving again unless the direction of the wind changes. I’ve seen videos of George Rickey’s works and George Sherwood’s as well and they do not do that. They continue to tumble about even if the wind does not change direction. Clearly there more to it than just getting the weight right.

Thank you for the nice article. I completely understand your attraction to this work. Or maybe I should say I share your attraction. I’m not at all sure I understand it.

Jeff Boring

Other than building a virtual model (should be on the website), I have never tried to build a kinetic sculpture. Sounds like a project I should consider.

Thanks for dropping the note.

Tom