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26 April 2024 22:00
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Welcome to the gyroscope forum. If you have a question about gyroscopes in general,
want to know how they work, or what they can be used for then you can leave your question here for others to answer.
You may also be able to help others by answering some of the questions on the site.
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Question |
| Asked by: |
Nitro |
| Subject: |
how to describe why precession does what it does |
| Question: |
Dear Will Nelson (and others),
You have stumbled across the problem with forums:- Most of the answers to life, the universe and everything are probably revealed in the web’s forum and blogs but no one, apart from a few who have long since gone mad, has the time or the patience to read all the forum answers amongst which these secrets lie.
Long, Oh! So long ago, I posted what I think is the easiest way to understand and to visualise how precession happens:-
Use your imagination to chop away almost all of a large gyroscope’s disc until you are left with a small slice. This slice may be now conveniently be thought of as a rigid pendulum. Let your right arm be that pendulum and be allowed to hang straight down to represent that pendulum. Imagine now, raising your arm straight out behind you. Imagine dropping your arm and allowing it to swing downwards like a pendulum. Notice the axial angle of your shoulder joint. Now imagine turning your body 90 degrees to the left as the pendulum drops so that the axis of the pendulum, your shoulder, is now at right angles to the original direction of your arm’s swing. Your arm, the pendulum, being free to swing in any direction, will choose to carry on in its swing in the same direction as it started to swing before you changed the way your body faced. Observe the axial angle of your shoulder now. Voila! Precession!
Kind regards
NM |
| Date: |
25 June 2012
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