When fidget spinners flooded classrooms in 2017, most people treated them as a passing craze. James Goh treated them as an optimization problem. Nine years later, the 23-year-old Cambridge University engineering student is the official Guinness World Record holder for the longest duration spinning a fidget spinner on one finger — and he beat the previous mark by nearly five minutes.
Goh, a student at Queens' College studying on the Manufacturing Engineering Tripos, kept his custom-built spinner rotating on a single fingertip for 30 minutes, 34.54 seconds. The attempt took place in Hong Kong, where Goh lives when not in Cambridge, on December 16, 2025, and was certified by Guinness this week.
"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," Goh said. "I suppose in a way I've taken the fidget out of fidget spinning."
A typical fidget spinner bought off the shelf will keep going for about 90 seconds. Goh's spinner ran roughly 20 times longer. The difference is engineering.
Goh's fascination with spinning objects predates the fidget spinner trend. He traces it back to seeing the iconic spinning top in Christopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception. As part of his Cambridge degree, he studies the physics of gyroscopes — the precision rotating components that show up in everything from smartphones to spacecraft navigation systems. He decided to apply that academic toolkit to his hobby.
The two fields that mattered most, he said, were aerodynamics and tribology — the science of friction. Reducing air drag and minimizing friction in the bearing are the two main levers for keeping a spinning object going longer. Goh worked through academic papers on both, built mathematical models using differential equations, and translated the math into 3D designs that he machined himself in the workshop.
The result is a device he calls the "pulsar fidget spinner." He originally developed the underlying formula for spinning tops, then adapted it for the spinner format.
"It involves a lot of data collection to come up with 3D models, which I then make in the workshop," Goh said. "Differential equations have helped me a lot to refine the design."
What keeps Goh interested, he said, is the open-ended nature of the problem. There is no upper limit, only the next material, the next bearing geometry, or the next trick to shave drag.
"People do often ask me why I'm so interested in spinning tops and fidget spinners," he 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 optimization 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."
The record sits at the intersection of toy and machine. The basic fidget spinner is a three-bladed object with a single ball bearing — about as simple as engineered objects get. But the gap between a 90-second commercial toy and a 30-minute record holder is essentially the same gap that separates a hobby drone from a Mars helicopter: small refinements compounding, multiplied by genuine physics expertise.
Goh's next move is unclear. He is in the final two years of his degree, and gyroscopes will keep showing up in his coursework long after the certificate from Guinness arrives in the mail. But somewhere, the world record is already on borrowed time — because as Goh himself noted, the goalposts on spin time keep moving, and the formulas are out there for anyone willing to do the math.
