A Cambridge University engineering student has spun his way into the record books, achieving the longest duration for spinning a fidget spinner on one finger. James Goh, 23, made his own fidget spinner to secure the Guinness World Records title with a time of 30 minutes 34.54 seconds, beating the previous record by nearly five minutes.
From Hobby to Record
Goh was at school when fidget spinners became a global craze in 2017. "This has been a hobby of mine since I was a kid, so I'm delighted to get the record – although my finger did ache a little bit after holding it in the same position for so long," he said. "I suppose in a way I've taken the fidget out of fidget spinning!" His record is about 20 times longer than a standard store-bought spinner.
The Physics Behind the Spin
The record attempt took place in Hong Kong, where Goh lives when not studying at Cambridge, on December 16, 2025. Goh's fascination with gyroscopes began after seeing the spinning top in Christopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception. As part of his engineering degree at Queens' College, he studies gyroscopes—critical components in smartphones and spacecraft navigation. He applied his knowledge of aerodynamics and tribology (the science of friction) to his hobby.
"People do often ask me why I'm so interested in spinning tops and fidget spinners," Goh said. "There's definitely something hypnotic about them and their mechanical efficiency is pretty remarkable. I also think it's got a lot to do with being competitive; it's a very interesting optimisation problem because the goal keeps shifting. There are always new materials or techniques to use to tweak the design – there are always improvements that can be made."
Engineering the Perfect Spinner
Currently studying on the Manufacturing Engineering Tripos, Goh used academic papers to inform his experiments and develop a formula for the record-breaking spinner. He originally devised the formula for spinning tops but adapted it to engineer his "pulsar fidget spinner." "It involves a lot of data collection to come up with 3D models, which I then make in the workshop," he explained. "Differential equations have helped me a lot to refine the formula, although there is no actual analytical solution, because technically it's unsolvable. There's no magical, optimal spinning time, but you can get close to it."
The core of Goh's spinner is made from lightweight hollow aluminium, while tungsten—an extremely dense metal—is concentrated around the edges to store kinetic energy. This design places all the weight on the outside, creating a high moment of inertia that helps it spin longer. "Designing a spinner is basically about three things: maximising the energy you start with, minimising the energy you end with and transitioning between those two states as slowly as possible, so you're losing energy as slowly as possible," he said. "The tricky thing is that these factors are all in conflict with each other, and in a really complicated way."
