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Asked by: santosh
Subject: Gyroscope & its kinamatics
Question: Defination of gyroscope. what is the working principle of gyroscope? How dose a gyroscope work? What is the characteristics & kinamatics of gyroscope? What is the appliction, advantages & demerits of gyroscope?
Date: 4 August 2004
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Answer: Juliano Valle - 04/08/2004 14:57:27
 A gyroscope is generally any spinning disc pivoted, supported or held in such a way that it has determined freedom to change its plane of rotation (not that itīll "want to" -to be explained later). The most common type of gyroscope -like the ones used for study purposes- is a spinning disc attached to a pivoted axis (imagine a spinning disc held at the end of a lever which can not only rotate in a fixed x-y plane but also vertically).
The working principle for the behavior of gyroscopes is the following: lets say a rinocerous is running your way, not applying any additional force to its movement and just being taken by inertia. Now lets say you try to stop that rinocerous, and you can catch it without being knocked to the floor. It will take some time and space to stop the rinocerous by exerting a determined resisting force against its movement; you could say that the rinocerousī inertia is exerting a certain "force" upon yourself. When a gyroscope is forced to change its plane of rotation, it acquires a certain rotational velocity outside of its previous rotation, which translates into different values and directions of velocities on single particles on the disc. When a particle of the disc has a certain velocity that does not pertain to its spinning velocity, and is suddenly "thrown" into a point of the disc with a different value or direction of velocity; its inertia forces it against the structure of the disc like the rinocerous "forcing" itself against you. Different values of the "force" of such inertia throughout the disc normally causes torque on the pivot of the gyroscope. A common misleading idea that is repeated often when describing the behavior of gyroscopes is that a gyroscope will respond to outside torques; when actually what it responds to is rotational velocity (a possible effect of outside torque). This is what is normally percieved as the "wants" of a gyroscope, mentioned earlier. Thats why it seems odd for certain students (or even graduates studying gyroscopic behavior) that a gyroscope appears to have a horizontal reaction against a vertical acceleration (impossible), when actually its reaction is only due to the velocity it acquires due to gravity.

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