The motion of a baton tossed in the air is not as simple as it may seem. Here we see the complex paths traced by its endpoints as it rises and falls while it twirls. The baton's center of mass, however, moves along an ordinary parabola, shown as a gray curve.

This animation was created for Math 490 (Fall 2014) by solving Lagrange's differential equations of motion in Maple, assuming that the blue ball weighs twice as much as the red.