Several years ago I got an old-fashioned wooden throwing top for Christmas. Unfortunately no one in my family knew what do with it. We couldn’t figure out how to get it to spin, so it went into the back of the closet. TR’s post about yo-yo videos finally made the light go on: The Internet knows…

Sure enough, there are sites with video tutorials showing how to throw tops.

• TopSpinning Tricks
• Spintastic’s Top Videos
• Interesting Webs of Spinning Tops

I never would have figured it out on my own…you wrap the string around a different part of the top than I was trying, and you throw it upside down (it flips over in the air). This is the kind of thing that makes the Internet more valuable than a library to me. Sure, I probably could have researched these tops at a library and gotten an instructional video through interlibrary loan. But not in 15 minutes.