What machine or object achieves the highest number of revolutions per minute? A dentist’s drill? A nuclear processing centrifuge? Some sub-atomic particle?
Would love to know…
Beckman Ultracentrifuges are pretty quick. Running at up to 100,000 rpm, they’ll spin your samples at 802,400 gravities. Some uranium enrichment centrifuges spin that fast, but they more typically operate in the 50,000 to 70,000 rpm range.
Bullets get right up there, too. Some of them can easily exceed 100,000 RPM.
According to this page, the fastest spinning man-made object is the Turbo Carver II drill (made by Cyber Woodworking Depot in Holyoke, Massachusetts), which can get up to 450,000 rpm.
Apparently, the typical speed for a dentist’s drill is about 300,000 rpm. The article also discusses micro polysilicon gears that run at about the same speed.
Personally, i’m more impressed by this pulsar, which is 20 miles in diameter, and still spins at over 42,000 rpm. That’s some serious angular velocity at the star’s surface.
I’m no cosmologist, but I believe the event horizon of a ‘maximal Kerr’ black hole rotates at the speed of light, which is the upper limit on speed of any kind.
Just to nitpick, that’s a linear measure of distance. The horizon could have an equatorial circumference of 1ly, in which case it would only spin at 1 revolution per year (~0.000002 rpm).
Dentist’s drills can achieve over 800,000 RPM according to the wiki entry:
That may be the fastest spinning artifact you will encounter in everyday life.
For exotic things, experimental motor bearings:
Probably translated from French.
These guys claim to have the fastest human propelled device ever created!
If you include man made vorticies then 1,000,000 rpm + is possible. These articles are of interest Vortex tube - Wikipedia , and Gyroscope.com - gyroscopes, educational toys and gadgets
or look up some of the more achedemic cites on “Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube”