Electronic Circuit Collection

Perpetual top Levitation Toy
The point of the perpetual top levitation toy is simply that it continues spinning forever, and the challenge is to understand the driving mechanism. The top is made of plastic, and contains embedded in it a small permanent magnet, oriented perpendicular to the spin axis of the top. The base contains a transistor and a coil with two windings, the assembly being driven by a 9-volt power supply. A schematic of the electrical circuit is shown in the figure.
As one pole of the magnet (say the south pole) approaches the coil, a current in induced in winding A, in such a direction as to make the base of the transistor (an NPN) go positive. That makes the emitter-collector current flow through winding B, in the opposite direction to A. The current through B is larger than that of A (due to the amplification of the transistor), so by Lenz's law the magnet pole will be attracted to the coil.