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23 November 2024 22:37
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Question |
| Asked by: |
Josh |
| Subject: |
strange |
| Question: |
I was doing a science progect on "Will a Gyroscope Lift Weight?" and i found something very peculiar. I had my progect set up so that the wheel (gyro) could go up and down and around. When I spun the wheel and the alluminum arm ( the alluminum arm was on a pivot point) the same way, the gyroscope lifted itself to horizontal. When I spun the arm and wheel different ways, the wheel dropped down to the ground and acted as limp as a dead fish. My first thought was that the arm was acting like a gyroscope also, but I dont know if it is right. I'm stumped. I'm also 12. |
| Date: |
12 January 2005
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Answers (Ordered by Date)
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| Answer: |
Glenn Hawkins - 07/05/2005 19:50:02
| | | Hi Josh,
The aluminum arm, or as some of us call it an axel no matter what kind of material it is made of will act just as you thought, that is act just like a gyro. There are two differences. Shapes mean a lot. Your arm, or axel is very thin and the wheel is much wider. If both are rotating at the same speed and an ant were riding on the axel and another ant were riding on the rim of the wheel the ant on the wheel would be traveling a lot further to complete a rotation. So the ant on the wheel would be traveling through space much faster and so he would be slung off. The ant traveling on the slender arm wouldn’t be going as fast and so let’s say he wouldn't be slung off. From this we can see that there is a lot more force the larger the wheel is, especially at the rim. The more force there is in rotation the greater is the gyroscopic effect. The axel then wouldn’t have enough effect to be generally worth bothering about. ….But you were right.
One more thing about shape: The axel is probably very long and if you can imagine cutting the axel into one hundred slices and rotating the one hundred slices you might imagine that each slice would attempt to rotate against the two slices beside it. There would be a lot of wasted force here in the way of actions and reactions.
If I haven’t done a good enough job explaining this don’t worry too much about it, it will come to you latter. I see evidence that grown men that are engineers, build wrong shapes (log shapes) into gyroscopes to try to stabilize a modern car when it goes around curves also don’t yet understand that shapes mean a lot.
As to understanding stabilizers you might use your search engine to look up ship stabilizers.
Josh this is very, very important: If you rotate home made gyros too fast they can hurt you very badly if they fly apart. Be sure to tell your physics teacher what you are doing and that somebody said you could get hurt. Don’t stop experimenting. Just get your physics teacher to help, or your dad if he knows all about gyros.
Good talking to you,
Glenn H.
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