Kids & Play

#69 · Learn pen spinning

The chopstick is the ideal tool for learning to spin a pen between your fingers. Hours of fidgety, mildly annoying fun.

Pen spinning - rotating a pen around the fingers - is much easier to learn on a weighted rod than on a standard biro, and a chopstick with tape at each end is close to the standard beginner's mod.

How to do it

1. Wrap several layers of tape around each end of a chopstick, building up equal weights.
2. Start with the ThumbAround: rest it between index and middle finger, push with the index, let it rotate around the thumb.
3. Catch it back between the same two fingers.
4. Repeat until it stops falling. This takes hundreds of attempts and there is no shortcut.

Why it works

Weighting both ends moves mass away from the centre, which increases the moment of inertia. A higher moment of inertia means the rod rotates more slowly for the same push and resists wobbling off-axis - so you get more time to position the catch. Every serious pen-spinning mod does exactly this.

Tips & warnings

• Practise sitting over a bed or a sofa. You will drop it several hundred times.
• Equal weight at both ends. Unbalanced and it will corkscrew instead of spinning flat.
• Chopsticks are quiet, which makes them much better than a weighted pen for practising anywhere near other people.