Just to make the above easier to read - the question is: The “Dzhanibekov effect” - an exercise in mechanics or fiction? Explain mathematically a video from a space station.
9:11 AM
BTW the question has been mentioned in this room not to long ago: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/9369/2019/9/19
in The h Bar, 2 hours ago, by weegee
The immediate axis theorem question should be on physics.SE, right?
in The h Bar, 1 hour ago, by PM 2Ring
@weegee Well, it is a mathematical physics question. But I don't know the rules of MathOverflow. Note that that question was posted before MathOverflow became part of the Stack Exchange network. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathOverflow
4 hours later…
12:44 PM
@weegee I guess that an answer saying "because it was posted on MO" would not be satisfactory to you....
In any case, this is more a question for MO regulars. (I do not consider myself one of them.) So at most I could tell you how it looks from an outsider's viewpoint.
My impression is that MO has only vague criteria for what should be considered on-topic/off-topic. And even if it has guidelines what belongs here, they are not strictly enforced.
Oct 3 '17 at 19:05, by Todd Trimble
I think one of the main criteria for "success" at MO is whether the users find a question interesting or challenging; that in itself serves as "self-motivating". Thus lack of an explicit motivation or setting of context is often seen as forgivable, if the question is perceived as having apparent intrinsic interest already.
So perhaps the main criterion whether a question is left on MO or not is whether the users consider it interesting.
That is more a general viewpoint - an observation that you might find here questions which do not exactly fit the rules as written in the help center and on meta.
About this specific question - it seems that there is also some mathematics behind it, so I am not really sure whether it should be considered off-topic on MO.
As you probably noticed, one of the answers links to the corresponding question on Physics: Why does this object periodically turn itself?
1:00 PM
I see your points and after going thought not a lot of threads, I can notice the vague criteria. And about your point it seems that there is also some mathematics behind it which connects to my explanation for it being on MO. We have many methods that explain it (which you can say as a physicist's explanation) by using forces but the question is about how to explain it mathematically.
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