  The motion of a handle spinning in space has an odd behavior. It seems to
unexpectedly flip back and forth in a periodic manner as seen in a popular
YouTube video. As an asymmetrical top, its motion is completely described by
the Euler equations and the equations of motion have been known for more than a
century. However, recent concepts of the geometric phase have allowed a new
perspective on this classical problem. Here we explicitly use the equations of
motion to find a closed form expression for total phase and hence the geometric
phase of the force-free asymmetric top and explore some consequences of this
formula with the particular example of the spinning handle for demonstration
purposes. As one of the simplest dynamical systems, the asymmetric top should
be a canonical example to explore the classical analog of Berry phase.
