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The Gyroscope Forum |
23 November 2024 21:39
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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.
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Question |
| Asked by: |
Charles Krol |
| Subject: |
How do gyroscopes work? |
| Question: |
How do gyroscopes work? Please explain in great detail so i can understand.
Thank You |
| Date: |
7 March 2003
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Answers (Ordered by Date)
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| Answer: |
Robert Beal - 24/06/2003 05:41:08
| | | Initially the flywheel has a high rate of spin (ie, a high angular velocity) so it has a large initial angular momentum. The weight of the flywheel is at some distance from the pivot point, so the weight of the flywheel is creating a torque (or moment). Now the vector representation of this torque is sideways, ie, horizontal, not vertical. This torque will introduce a small angular momentum which is also a sideways vector and adds vectorially to the large angular momentum that the flywheel already has. The small angular momentum vector due to the torque is perpendicular to the large angular momentum vector due to the spin, but both lie in the horizontal plane. If you add these two vectors you will see that you get the large original angular momentum plus a small change in its direction - so the flywheel precesses slowly in the horizontal plane. In the vertical plane, the weight of the flywheel is counterbalanced by the upward force at the gyros pivot point, so the Sum of the Forces is zero. You have to consider two things here: the forces and the torques. The forces (the downward force of the flywheels weight and the upward force at the gyro's pivot) exactly cancel out; but the torques do not which leads to vectorial addition of the two angular momentums which leads to the precession in the horizontal plane.
If the flywheel were not initially spinning, then the small angular momentum injected by the torque would have nothing to add to and the flywheel would just topple over as expected.
I got the above explaination from "University Physics, 6th Edition" by Sears, Zemansky, and Young - ISBN 0-201-07195-9, pages 201 and 202.
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