Online fidget spinner

How to spin it

• Flick: press near the edge and swipe around the centre, then let go mid-swipe. The faster your finger is moving at the moment you let go, the faster it spins.
• Push it again: flicking in the same direction while it spins adds speed; flicking against it slows it down.
• Brake: press and hold still. Like a fingertip on a real spinner, it slows quickly.
• Turn it slowly: when it's stopped, drag gently and it follows your finger.

The physics, in plain words

Two things slow a spinner down. The bearing has a small, constant drag that doesn't care how fast you're going, and the air pushes back harder the faster it spins. This page models both, so a hard flick loses speed fast at first and then coasts for a long time. Each bearing setting has different amounts of both. From the hardest possible flick (about 1,500 rpm in this simulator) the spin lasts about 163 s on smooth ceramic, 106 s on steel, 36 s on gritty bargain bin.

The motion is calculated from the exact formula rather than nudged frame by frame, so the spinner behaves the same on a slow phone and a fast laptop. Your longest spin is remembered in your browser, so you can try to beat it next time.

Bearings, briefly

A spinner turns on a ball bearing: a ring of small balls rolling between an inner and an outer race. The smoother the balls and the less grease and grit in the way, the less the bearing drags, and the longer a spin lasts. Toy makers tend to advertise ceramic balls as the premium option, while cheap spinners often use steel bearings packed with thick grease, which feel gritty and stop quickly. The three settings here are made-up points on that scale rather than measurements of real parts:

• Smooth ceramic: very little drag. Long, quiet coasts.
• Steel: the everyday default. A good flick spins for well over a minute.
• Gritty bargain bin: a lot of constant drag, so even a hard flick dies within about half a minute.

Changing the bearing takes effect immediately, even mid-spin, so you can feel how the same speed decays differently.

Why it looks strange at high speed

Above a few hundred rpm the arms can seem to slow down, stand still or even turn backwards. That is the wagon-wheel effect: your screen redraws a fixed number of times per second, and when the spinner turns almost exactly one arm-gap between redraws, your eye links up the wrong arms. Film cameras do the same thing. A soft blur fades in at high speed to soften it.

A note on focus claims

Spinners were sold as a way to help people concentrate, but the research is thin and points both ways. In one classroom study of 60 preschoolers with ADHD, using spinners went with poorer attention Graziano et al., J Atten Disord 2020 (checked 2026-10-09), while a small study of three children found more time on task Aspiranti & Hulac, Behav Anal Pract 2022 (checked 2026-10-09). This spinner is here because it's fun to flick, nothing more.