Maxwell’s Wheel Mechanism

Maxwell's wheel is a metal wheel with a shaft passing through its axis, and two thin threads are attached to the shaft of this wheel, which can be wrapped around the axis. If we wrap the two threads attached to the wheel around its axis and fix the two free ends of the threads to two points, when the wheel is released, it starts to fall, and while falling, the threads are loosened around the axis and causes the wheel to rotate around its axis too. If we consider the initial point where we dropped the wheel, the source of zero potential energy, while the wheel falls, it has both rotational and translational motion. In this experiment, we can calculate the moment of inertia of Maxwell's wheel by using the law of conservation of mechanical energy.