I give an intuitive explanation of the Dzhanibekov effect on a rotating rigid body, and discuss its relationship with the intermediate axis theorem.

Simulations were created using glowscript (glowscript.org), developed by David Scherer and Bruce Sherwood.

The simulations are based on the Lagrangian equations of motion for a simple rigid body. I will present the mathematical details in an accompanying video.

Thanks to Derek Muller (Veritasium) and Matt Parker (Stand-up Maths) for permission to use clips from their videos.