system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How can a spinning top stay upright while it's rotating?
gpt
When something spins, it has inertia just like an automobile and just like an automobile, it is very easy to move it in certain directions in respect to the direction of the movement and difficult in other directions. The trick is that with a top, the inertia isn't all in one direction, it is in all directions along a plane. Shifting that plane up, down, or to the side takes very little energy, but turning the orientation of it requires disrupting the inertia, so you will experience a force if you try to do so. As long as the force which tends to topple the top is less than the force resisting it, the top will stay up.