Professor of Sports

Q. What is the secret to spinning a basketball on your finger? – Jack, 8, New York

The Prof Says: The secret is momentum. That is how Joseph Odhiambo kept a ball spinning for a world record four hours and 15 minutes during the NBA All-Star Jam Session in Houston in 2006. “The bigger the momentum of something, the harder it is to stop it,” says Francisco Capristan, a NASA engineer whose Ph.D. research focused on the trajectories of rockets (though not the Houston Rockets).

(full article published in Sports Illustrated Kids, December 2015)