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26 April 2024 10:57
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Welcome to the gyroscope forum. If you have a question about gyroscopes in general,
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Question |
| Asked by: |
Nitro |
| Subject: |
Equal but not opposite |
| Question: |
Dear Stan Smith and Dr Fisher – What the hell! lets have everyone in on this- Dear all,
You all, I think, are aware that the much revered Einstein in the absence of means of carrying out practical experiments (apparently in his day it was bloody hard poking individual bits of atoms about at near light speed) to provide empirical proof of some of his ideas he relied, instead,on mind experiments (typical bloody lazy mathematician! I think he’s largely responsible for the spread of people doodling equations on blackboards instead of getting a proper job, like making paper planes and suchlike). I suggest a simple mind experiment for you to try. You are most fortunate compared to Einstein in that I have previously put up a video that makes the mind experiment so much easier for those that have not previously carried out practical experiments to justify their own beliefs in the immutability of the earlier well trod path of Newton. Er! That would seem to be you then “Stan and David”.
Now sit up straight and pay attention all those who would improve their understanding of how it is possible to sod up lots of Newton (but admittedly also confirm much of Newton) and firmly place your plates (cockney again – look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls you lazy yanks!) on the first step on the road to IP.
Before you look at the video link below, if you have not looked before, you should understand that the motions shown on the end of a string can be duplicated using a ridged pendulum arm instead. It should also be understood that I do not particularly wish to have the scruffy, greying beard shown in the video but my wife wants me to keep it. My wife also likes to travel the world (this I hate – the traveling, not the being somewhere different – so will those amongst us working on a “ beam me up, Scottie machine”, please get a move on!) which is largely why I have had to concentrate my inventive genius, not as I would wish, on stretching the boundaries of your understanding but towards inventions and projects that enable funding for my wife to fly of hither and yon dragging me, protesting all the while, with her. I hate to be locked into an impossibly thin, stressed, aluminium (sorry US and Canadiaium:- aloominm!) tube or, as in the last case, a carbon fibre tube (that is cunningly fitted with auto-exploding, ferociously inflammable, batteries) that is the Dreamliner which recently hurtled us, on wings that bent like a banana, to the Maldives. The locals forbid the import of alcoholic beverages but are happy to sell them to you at vast prices at your resort. So nice to find religious integrity these days! It was a lovely place with lovely people though.
I digress and why not? You are not bored yet are you? Good, then get comfortable and I shall begin. Now would be a good time to look – or relook – at the video here:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNHxSYYMd-Q
As can be seen in the video a pendulum weight formed by a gyro in a ball (I put it in a ball valve float to stop doubters saying its deflection was caused by Magnus effect. Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls!) is released and describes a curve when viewed from above. Clockwise in the first section and anticlockwise in the second, to avoid accusations of handism (a far worse offence than racism, in these days of politically correctism, I am told! – no, just to show it works both ways).
Now get the image of the pendulum swing (when viewed from above) locked into your brain and remember the curve. Got that? Great! Now this is where you need to use your brain and a little bit of imagination to be like Einstein - you do want to be like Einstein, with pretty girls adoring him and exploded mattress hair, don’t you? Great! Then let us put our size ten plates (I told you to look it up!) on that first step!
Woops! My breakfast is ready and you are going to have to wait a while before I continue to improve your learning of how (bits of) Newton can be circumvented....................................... Later
Oh! While you wait for my return – your homework is to give a short description of where the opposite displacement (equalling that of the clockwise displacement to one side of what should be a linear swing path), as required under Newtonian law, is.
NM |
| Date: |
30 May 2014
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Answers (Ordered by Date)
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| Answer: |
Stan Smith - 30/05/2014 11:15:54
| | | Years ago, somebody wrote to the Q&A department of New Scientist and asked how it was that somebody on a child's swing could start swinging without touching the ground, "there is nothing to react against" he squealed. In one of his books for children, Laithwaite himself called it 'inertial propulsion', thus further adding to the poor scientific understanding of laymen. You are making the same mistake; no matter how insubstantial the ropes of a swing, or your string, may look they still provide a reaction force. After all, that reaction force is already stopping your sphere from falling, and making it follow an arc. In outer space, your sphere would change orientation but not direction.
Incidentally, the Foucault experiment is not as easy as it looks: after his first demonstration, people all over the world tried to repeat it. Their pendula went everywhere: anticlockwise, clockwise, figure-of-eight ...
BTW, it does not help authority-wise that you mispronounce his name: it is Fook-Owe, with slightly more emphasis on the first syllable.
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Stan Smith - 30/05/2014 11:56:21
| | | PS
Almost forgot: Laithwaite performed an experiment similar to yours on Horizon back in the 80s. I guess that nowadays he would be all over Youtube, instead of TV, with his disinformation.
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Nitro - 30/05/2014 12:31:22
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Ah! Nothing better to do like me eh! Stan, (please could we go by your real name Dave, or won’t Sussex university let you?)
I can always be sure when someone cannot answer a simple question – they always answer one that was not asked. I did not suggest anywhere that there was no reaction on the pivot (as there is with your non answer example of a child's swing) just that it is not (all) opposite. I already know how to pronounce Foucault (there is good understanding of French pronunciation here in Guernsey) but for some reason – age and boredom I suppose – I miss-recollected his name as Fouquet, just as well I don’t pretend to be an authority I guess. I realised this before I put up the video but was not prepared to risk my wife killing me if I put another hole in that door frame to redo the video. Your recollection of the gyro pendulum “disinformation” by Laithwaite is not quite right as his started with a horizontal axis of spin – crap! I wasn’t going to be petty and unnecessarily pedantic – see the effect you have on people?
Now Stan/Dave, are you able to take another shot at explaining where the opposite mass movement is? Preferable without the waffle and pedantry to distract from your lack of practical knowledge.
NM
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Stan Smith - 30/05/2014 14:06:43
| | | I have absolutely no connection with Sussex. It would be academically embarrassing to be connected with a university which had entertained the delusions of both Laithwaite and Searl. Your confusion perhaps stems from the fact that any sane physicist will say exactly the same things, in exactly the same manner, when it comes to the tired old non-topic of gyroscopic propulsion. It will soon be 100 years since the first attempt was made to patent it. That should tell you something.
The question was answered. Your trying to interpret every little movement as being meaningful is what led Aristotle astray.
Forever denying that a question was not answered (when it was) is as intellectually dishonest as saying that the wrong question was answered.
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Nitro - 30/05/2014 14:08:19
| | | Good day Class,
Have you all looked at the video and understood the importance of the curved path? You haven’t Dave? Well never mind. You were probably to busy day dreaming about why it couldn’t work in space to be able to think this is only a tiny step towards how it could. Lets continue to the next stage and hope that those who haven’t handed in their homework can catch up as we go along.
Let us continue with a mind experiment a la (yes, Dave I do know how that is pronounced, thank you) Einstein. Picture now, if you will, a gyro pendulum with a second gyro pendulum spaced apart on a horizontal rotatable shaft so as not to collide as they swing towards and then away from each other when lifted back and then released. Can you all picture that? Yes, you can draw it if it helps, Dave. The gyros spin in opposite sense to each other. To synchronise the swings of the pendulums the strings of the gyros shown in the video are replaced by rigid rods having link arms to ensure their swings are in opposing synchrony. After the pendulums are pulled back and released they each follow the type of curved path seen in the video. Now stop their swing as they reach the greatest point in their deflection before they start their subsequent swing. As their acceleration towards each other is equal and opposite the forces that cause the swing neatly cancel (yes, Dave, I know that energy had to be put into the system to lift back the pendulums into the start position. Do try and focus. We are not trying to create perpetual motion here. That's next term.) leaving just the twin masses of the gyro’s displaced from the centre line by the aforementioned curved path. No Dave, this would not work in space. To get to that stage you will need to do some more practical work after lots of mind experiments and show you have progressed in your understanding.
Ah! There’s the lunch bell – More on this after I have seen, from your homework descriptions of what causes there to be no visible opposite reaction (note; “opposite”, class), that you are far enough along to follow the next step.
NM
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Stan Smith - 30/05/2014 14:36:27
| | | What is the point of discussing ideas that will not work in space? Any eccentrically moving device can propel itself over shiny floors or water. As you have that conveniently placed string, why don't you show something that can hang permanently to one side of vertical (and not in the sense of a conical pendulum). Or do you need time to get some monofilament nylon line?
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Nitro - 30/05/2014 15:10:59
| | | Ah! Sorry Dave to have moved your University however, your comment about intellectual dishonesty must have jogged my memory about you. Just as I mixed up Foucault with Fouquet because of my age and lack of interest so I must have mixed up Sussex with your university of Surrey. Still living at you parents house, are you?
Intellectual bankrupts would probably know far more than I do but I cannot see an answer in your last but one as to where the opposing mass movement lies. Perhaps you are of the belief that somehow the string in the video is pushing in the opposite direction to the gyros sideways displacement and therefore the sideways mass movement of the gyro is opposed in the string pushing in the opposite direction on the world via its hanger. Do you Dave? Please explain your answer. More homework needed for you methinks.
NM
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Nitro - 03/06/2014 17:34:43
| | | Good morning class.
As Dave has been put back to the remedial class in the Sussex wing and we no longer have to wait for him to catch up, I thought would try and clear up some misunderstandings shown up in earlier homework.
Blaze, you said earlier that the gyro going into precession must, at least temporarily apply a force, in the contra direction to precession, upon its pivot (the top of the Eifel tower, if you will). Blaze, you are right but wrong in that you have forgotten Nitro’s first law. There is a force applied to the tower but most (“most” because there is no such thing as the perfect gyro) of it is straight down on the tower, not sideways in a contra rotating direction. I think you must have forgotten you were dealing with a gyro.
Another misconception that I would like to put to rest is the idea that Newton's laws, wonderful though they are, cannot be in the slightest degree wrong. (And Blaze, perhaps you would see me later and explain how it is that you think you may be on the path to IP while still conforming to Newton's laws?) The only person I have found that held such mutually incompatible views was poor old Eric but he had been bullied to distraction by the RS. I think that stands for “Radio Spares” well, spare parts of some sort.
As most know, I have put up a school video which clearly shows that a force can be created in a swinging object, to cause an action (deflection of the object) with most (again, “most” because there is no such thing as a perfect gyro) of the opposing action missing (there is nothing being deflected in the opposite direction) which, under the third law, cannot be missing.
It also shows that a body that has only the singularly straight (on our scale of things) force of gravity acting upon it can be displace to one side of the expected path by a force created within the body. This is contrary to the extrapolation of the first law.
While neither of these facts are of any obvious use in space they can help open the rusted up gates to a path that has become overgrown with weeds and neglect from over three hundred years of an orthodoxy of physics which said there was nothing to be found beyond.
Let’s start to get rid of the weeds and oil the hinges. Don’t worry, I’m not going to scare you with all that’s behind this gate yet (because I only know the tiniest bit, myself) I intend to just creak it, and our brains, a little.
Woops! there goes the playtime bell again we will continue with a look at some of the more obvious anomalies that counter Newton's third after the break. No running in the corridor Sandy or, thanks to the new European regulations on health and safety, in the playground without your crash helmet and goggles!
NM
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Blaze - 04/06/2014 00:45:14
| | | Hi Nitro.
"perhaps you would see me later and explain how it is that you think you may be on the path to IP while still conforming to Newton's laws?"
Well I can explain it now. It is simple when one is not trying to produce IP. I personally don't believe IP can be done and it is not what I am trying to do. I am working on RAM propulsion. My design uses action/reaction to produce propulsion (if it produces propulsion). RAM stands for Recycling Acceleration Mass and that is really what everyone is trying to do. Use the same acceleration (or reaction) mass, over and over. The gyro is simply the reset mechanism. In my design the gyro produces no propulsion what so ever.
cheers,
Blaze
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Blaze - 04/06/2014 01:03:29
| | | Hi Nitro.
"There is a force applied to the tower but most (“most” because there is no such thing as the perfect gyro) of it is straight down on the tower, not sideways in a contra rotating direction."
Actually, the sideways force is quite significant but also very brief and it is non linear. If you want to ignore it, feel free. I certainly won't try to stop you.
cheers,
Blaze
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Nitro - 04/06/2014 09:17:09
| | | Good afternoon class,
Let’s go straight into a look at Newton's third law that says roughly:- to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Most of us are more than familiar with the linear versions of the third law – chucking the proverbial brick off the proverbial sledge and so on - but perhaps some are less familiar with the torsional version. Most know that the reason for having the tail rotor on a helicopter is partly to control yaw for steering. However, it is mainly there to prevent the helicopter rotating in the opposite sense to the rotor by applying a torsional force that matches the torsional drag of the blades, without it the helicopter spirals into an uncontrollable crash – sadly this happens quite often if the tail rotor blades or its drive train suffer even the slightest damage.
In space you cannot push against anything outside so a different approach to steering is needed.
For short hop spacecraft, like the amazing, early, man carrying craft doing just a few orbits or a hop to the moon, propellant was used not just in their main thrust reaction rocket motors but also in multi directional mini reaction rocket motors to correct or alter its roll, pitch and yaw. It uses this mini rocket technique because the payload of the fuel for these functions on comparatively short journeys is acceptable. However large spacecraft, those needing long stays in space or those needing to regularly alter their attitude to, for example, reposition their on-board telescope to focus on different parts of the sky, fuel payload even for mini rockets becomes unacceptable. To do away with this large fuel payload a means to alter the craft’s attitude that can be achieved with, for example solar generated electricity becomes preferable, as no fuel payload is required. To do this without carrying fuel is, perhaps surprisingly due to their weight, achieved with an array of large gyros.
This provides a Newtonian anomaly as the array can alter the attitude of the craft torsionally without an equal mass contra rotating and shows quite clearly that Newton’s laws while astonishingly accurate have areas where they don’t apply at all and to which a blind eye is turned.
This technique (on one axis) can be seen, in crude form, on numerous you-tube videos of people sitting on a swivel chair and, by force precessing a wheel/gyro, by hand, on a horizontal axis can swivel round on the chair’s vertical axis. Again there is no mass contra-rotating so where is Newton's third in this axial change?
A further anomaly exists to do with orbiting craft that I have touched on before. Though not really similar this makes, I think, an interesting aside is how a spacecraft in orbit needs to direct its main motor rocket exhaust to travel in a given direction. To gain orbital height the craft has to be angled so that its thrust is, not downwards towards the planet as might be expected under the equal and opposite rule, but rearwards to increase its orbital speed. Similar 90 degree (almost) displacement of thrust to the desired direction of travel are required for other manoeuvres. Small wonder they had a nightmare docking in the early days before better computers and fly by wire could take over and let the astronauts concentrate on more pressing things like staying alive when bits fell off a craft built by the cheapest contractor and sent up to meet political deadlines and not when it was safe to do so.
Newton was a great observer but not some omnipotent God. Though he was probably better able to observe with an open mind than our current bunch of “scientists”.
Blaze, your work is clearly paralleling mine and I have no argument with your belief that what we are heading for is a less than ideal IP (impulse drive) as thousands or millions of impulses will be needed to shove even a small craft a small distance. However, when it first moved, who would have thought the internal combustion engine – it actually started with gunpowder driving a piston. Mm. where’s my Health and safety manual – would end up in todays form? To be pedantic I think that it still falls under the category of Gyro IP as the gyro/s are essential to obtaining an unbalanced set of actions and reactions. As having just one action (or actualy reaction) left over will enable a device that will move without the need of gravity or atmosphere, such a device by definition of the first and third laws will not be conforming to Newton (though it will conform to the second law).
Class dismissed to carry out your practical work in the school shed.
kind regards
NM
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Harry K. - 04/06/2014 11:05:38
| | | Hello Nitro,
I mainly agree with but how do you apply the necessary tilting torque to engage the 90 degrees deflection of the gyro? Unfortunately there will act a counter torque to this applied tilting torque.
Regards,
Harald
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Nitro - 04/06/2014 11:15:39
| | | Hi Harry
Opposite mass displacement?
NM
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Harry K. - 04/06/2014 11:40:47
| | | Hi Nitro,
Yes of course. The counter toque would displace the dead weight mass ot the space ship around the spinning gyro in counter direction to the applied torque., i.e. the space ship would rotate in precession plane and in tilting plane at the same time. That's the only problem I see.
Regards,
Harald
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Nitro - 04/06/2014 12:14:38
| | | Hi Harry
I attach a link below to bring you up to speed. As you can see I am not suggesting using a gyro assembly to alter the attitude of a craft in space - I am telling you this is how it is already done with a "control movement gyro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope
Linear is only a short hop away - be prepared.
kind regards
NM
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Harry K. - 04/06/2014 12:54:08
| | | Hi Nitro,
Thanks for the link. I'm sure you did read the chapter "singularities".
As they wrote you need at least 3 gyros to control the attitude of the spacecraft because of the additional occuring counter orientations to the tilting torque (singularities).
By the way it's funny that they talk from "saturation" in this context. ;-)
Regards,
Harald
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Blaze - 05/06/2014 00:40:02
| | | Hi Nitro. I doubt our work is similar. My design is very different than any descriptions or videos that I have seen on this forum. My design (theoretically) thrusts continuously but with variable output. There are no discrete impulses. Reset happens at the same time as propulsion.
cheers,
Blaze
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Glenn Hawkins - 05/06/2014 21:42:53
| | | Hello Blaze,
It is easy to understand, but only you will understand. In the four sections of the flywheel, two resist. They are located top front and bottom rear. They do not cause reactions, because resistance empties as fast as it is overpowered.
In the process of the tilting movement, particle of matter rotate upward in the front of the tilted wheel and then at the top pushes inward and sideways toward the pivot from built up momentum as particles attempt to remain in the spin plane as they were at in the bottom. The same things happen in the rear of the wheel, except that the rear pushes outward from the pivot instead of inward. These two momentum forces built from equal and opposite twist the flywheel around the pivot. Every action causes a perfect right angle reaction and this is the exact reason inertial propulsion can not be had. It never had a chance. No one ever had a chance and never will and probably no one here will ever understand. The simple took me many years to grasp, but once grasp it is falling down simple.
We will just wait and see what you have, but I am sorry. I hope you succeed, but I don’t have a load of confidence. I know you don’t either, but it seems you have and are making a hell of a good effort. My fingers are crossed regardless.
Maybe we can warn other people against wasting their lives working hard on the impossible.
Cheers,
Glenn
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Blaze - 06/06/2014 01:03:50
| | | Hi Glenn. What you are describing sounds very much like what I discovered about 2 years ago. It is actually easy to see why a gyro does what it does when you know this but it does take some time to get your head around the concept.
This is also the reason I have been saying that "gyroscopic propulsion" is impossible. The gyro, acting as a gyro, can never produce any propulsion. Like the old saying goes, "you can't get there from here". The best you can do with the gyro is to use it as the reset mechanism.
I hope to get some work done on my project this weekend. I am at the point where I am tuning software parameters and making sure the software control outputs matches the hardware movements. This will, unfortunately, take some time and I have to do it separately for two major components and then sync those two components properly. So far the movement for the first component is fairly good but every so often something in the software screws up and I have yet to find out why. I will get it all worked out, it will just take time. I believe there is still a glimmer of hope for this project, maybe even more than a glimmer, but I just won't know for sure until I get it all running properly.
cheers,
Blaze
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Nitro - 11/06/2014 14:44:14
| | | CORRECTING NEWTON!
OK Class. If you would all please sit up straight and pay attention. As you will have heard during my recent contra temps with Dr David Fisher I cruelly said that those who can, do and those who cannot, teach. To adhere to my beliefs about teaching this will be my last term with you rowdy lot before I get on with “doing”. (Though if Surrey University, or indeed Cambridge University Engineering Dept., wants to loan me time on an air table I am quite happy to keep teaching for a while longer. I will even bring a slice of humble pie for them or me to enjoy. How about it Dr Dave, Dr Hugh, anybody?)
Let us spend a moment to recap:- For IP (impulse propulsion) to be possible the first law (Newton's, not Nitro’s) must be obeyed. Newton's first law says that the state of a body at rest or in steady motion needs a force to act upon it if its state is to be changed. The third law says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This is a bit of an inconvenient estoppel if you are searching for IP and want to change the state of a body without throwing something, like rocket exhaust, away to obtain the necessary reaction. Newton’s third law would seem to block any possibility of creating IP purely from within a machine like a spacecraft. However this block is dependent on the third law being right.
Newton, bless his little cotton socks, was bloody clever for his time but, even he didn't know everything, and he miswrote the third law. He unnecessarily added the word “opposite” and sodded the whole thing up. Some of you have already gathered this from experiences with gyroscopes and the fact that a spacecraft can use internally created torque reaction movement to alter its attitude. Getting internally created linear movement is no less possible – just a bit more of a right bastard to get your head round. To be correct the third law should simply read:-
FOR EVERY ACTION THERE IS AN EQUAL REACTION.
That’s it for today class. Next time I will explain how correcting this “Newton’s cock up” changes everything .............
No homework today, class, to give you time to think about the above – Oh! Yes! And there is need to rush to file patents as I have already done so, which is why I will be able to open up a bit in further lessons.
Class dismiss
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Patrick Hill - 15/06/2014 06:05:59
| | | What the.... Stan or Dave or could not care less as you can clearly see in the camcorder style video that the hook at the top of the (simple float) is not actually top centered or axialat all and is bias of weighted sphere ,so slide of hand or manipulated for certain not.but guilty of trying to manipulate minds.clap clap thou you are a v good illutionist.if u took a huge long pendulum it would dress to the left if u let go facing north..359 367 around 360 takes bigger balls.ps to all I never have looked in that address,best to ring me
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Patrick Hill - 15/06/2014 06:06:08
| | | What the.... Stan or Dave or could not care less as you can clearly see in the camcorder style video that the hook at the top of the (simple float) is not actually top centered or axialat all and is bias of weighted sphere ,so slide of hand or manipulated for certain not.but guilty of trying to manipulate minds.clap clap thou you are a v good illutionist.if u took a huge long pendulum it would dress to the left if u let go facing north..359 367 around 360 takes bigger balls.ps to all I never have looked in that address,best to ring me
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Dave Parsons - 01/07/2015 08:31:24
| | | God:
What a bunch of long-winded buggers.
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