Noticed as a kid I could flip a quarter with a certain consistency, so I experimented a bit and quickly got to be >90% accurate with an ordinary (controlled) flip.
Pretty simple. In fact I just picked up a quarter and practiced (20+ years out of practice) and have some observations:
1) harder than when I was a kid, my fingers are lot bigger + stronger so it's not as precise from the start. A bigger and heavier coin would help.
2) the timing factor is bigger than I recalled.. essentially you can watch the coin flipping and get a subconscious/automatic/predictable sort of count/feedback to it. You can bring your hand up to the coin in the air at a precise moment pretty easily and "tell" (>90% accuracy today of the flips I just did that I considered successful before looking at the result) if the flip was predictable. Hand eye coordination, spatial awareness is very correlated to this skill, I suppose.
3) it really is the same side that comes up.. again I think because of the automatic watching/count/completion of full rotations, i.e. catching the coin at the end of a full rotation instead of a partial.
Came in handy occasionally.. if I knew I was going to be wrong (other person usually waits to call mid-flip) I could catch the coin a little lower to give myself a chance, or punk them by not putting it on the back of my hand as is more standard (they might demand a re-flip.. kind of like if you are playing rock paper scissors and one person goes on 3 and the other on 4).
This. When I tried to comment briefly yesterday that the coin falls on the same side, only then did I remember that I actually did that and that it has nothing to do with physics but rather neuroscience (and innocently bent morality - which was also the object of my internal observations). then I remembered that I had actually considered different coin sizes, but I was never as thorough in my attempts to bend the results as you were. oh... the playgrounds of childhoods...
Pretty simple. In fact I just picked up a quarter and practiced (20+ years out of practice) and have some observations: 1) harder than when I was a kid, my fingers are lot bigger + stronger so it's not as precise from the start. A bigger and heavier coin would help. 2) the timing factor is bigger than I recalled.. essentially you can watch the coin flipping and get a subconscious/automatic/predictable sort of count/feedback to it. You can bring your hand up to the coin in the air at a precise moment pretty easily and "tell" (>90% accuracy today of the flips I just did that I considered successful before looking at the result) if the flip was predictable. Hand eye coordination, spatial awareness is very correlated to this skill, I suppose. 3) it really is the same side that comes up.. again I think because of the automatic watching/count/completion of full rotations, i.e. catching the coin at the end of a full rotation instead of a partial.
Came in handy occasionally.. if I knew I was going to be wrong (other person usually waits to call mid-flip) I could catch the coin a little lower to give myself a chance, or punk them by not putting it on the back of my hand as is more standard (they might demand a re-flip.. kind of like if you are playing rock paper scissors and one person goes on 3 and the other on 4).