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20 May 2024 14:15
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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: |
Glenn Hawkins |
| Subject: |
Just how confident are you? |
| Question: |
Are you game enough to argue three of your most fundamental beliefs in gyroscopic phenomena? Would you be willing to question yourself? To begin:
Place a toy gyro on a glass table. Slow the rotation speed, until the gyro will spiral downward from a 30o alignment until it touches the table within a period of about two seconds more or less.
(a.) What are the actions of the base of the pedestal against the glass?
(b.) What dose the gyro do once it touches the glass?
(c.) What dose the pedestal do once the gyro touches the glass?
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| Date: |
30 August 2005
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Answers (Ordered by Date)
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| Answer: |
Momentus - 31/08/2005 13:03:55
| | | To answer a question about a gyroscope it is necessary to differentiate between things gyroscopic and dull inert mass. It is only the gyroscope mass that has gyroscopic phenomena.
A classic gyroscope consists of a minimum of three equal masses equi-spaced about an axis.
This is the Spin axis.
At right angles to the spin axis and to each other are
The Couple axis
The precession axis
These three axes are variously known as the X Y Z axis, Roll, yaw, pitch, Front to back, left to right, up and down. These are the orthogonal axes.
Any movement a gyroscope makes is precession.
All precession is accompanied by a gyroscope couple
The direction of couple and precession are orthogonal to the spin axis.
Couple and precession are instantaneous therefore occur at the same time. You do not apply a force to precess a gyroscope nor do you move it to produce a force. It is one linked phenomenon. It is not cause followed by effect.
If a gyroscope moves in any direction whatsoever, (except spin obviously) then the word used to describe that movement is precession and there exists an orthogonal force the name of which is gyroscopic couple.
Whatever you THINK you may be doing to your spinning flywheel it is responding with couple and precession. See Nitro’s Law
Now back to the original question, which is about a toy gyroscope on a tower, which starts life being held at an angle of 30o up from the horizontal, and is released to precess around and oppose the gravity couple.
If it was not a toy, then it would spin for ever, and precess at a 30o angle, for ever.
It is stipulated however that it descends in about 2 seconds. The path followed is therefore a downward spiral. Gravity acts only vertically therefore to get the gyroscope to precess at an angle, the resultant force must be a vector sum of the vertical g force plus an (as yet) undetermined horizontal force.
A simple and controllable way to do this would be to add friction to the vertical axis.
The magnitude of this horizontal friction couple would determine the angle, and therefore the time taken to drop to the table.
It is doubtful in the toy gyroscope scenario that the friction of the shaft end on the tower would be enough to cause the gyroscope to drop, but it would contribute.
The other factor is the gradual reduction in spin speed due to bearing friction. This is implied as a factor in the way that the challenge is presented “Slow the rotation speed, until the gyro will spiral downward”
How can this slowing of the gyroscope spin give a horizontal couple to add to the tower friction? In theory or with a perfect gyroscope the slowing of the spin would only result in an increase in the speed of procession, to maintain the reaction to the gravity couple. There would be no drop, just an ever faster rate of rotation about the vertical axis as the wheel slows down, with the gyroscope remaining at 30o.
In practice, the toy gyroscope has inert mass. This mass has to be accelerated Newton style. It requires an equal and opposite force and a supply of energy. Momentum may or may not be conserved, but energy certainly is conserved.
The horizontal force required to vector the precession downwards is that force required to accelerate the inert mass. The energy comes from the potential energy given up by the drop.
So we have a second mechanism to drop the gyroscope, the acceleration of inert mass. Changing the inert mass will change the rate of descent in a controllable way.
Now that there is an explanation of the mechanisms involved, we can see that the gyroscope plays a very minor part in the toy gyroscope scenario. For the toy to behave as described, it is the non-gyroscopic forces that determine the behaviour.
(a.) What are the actions of the base of the pedestal against the glass?
This depends upon the inert mass. If this mass is large, then the tower will move. The instantaneous centre of rotation thus formed by equal and opposite motions will be at a point between the tower and the flywheel. The greater the inert mass the further this point will be away from the tower.
The perfect gyroscope would not react horizontally against the tower, there would be no displacement
(b.) What dose the gyro do once it touches the glass?
The inert mass does the Newton thing and keeps on going. This is a horizontal precession/couple. The gyroscope bounces, or as it is called in the trade, nutates. That is the definition of nutation by the way. The extent of this bounce is determined by the Newtonian reaction of the inert mass.
The perfect gyroscope stops instantly No gravity couple means no precession about the vertical.
(c.) What dose the pedestal do once the gyro touches the glass?
Reacts to whatever the Newtonian bit of the toy is doing (and that is chaotic), it moves in the equal and opposite way to the movement of the tower in (a). Whether or not this can be seen in the chaos of the nutation, I would not like to hazard a guess.
The perfect gyroscope has no effect on the tower.
Challenge sorted. Hope you enjoy this exposition
Momentus.
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| Answer: |
Glenn Hawkins - 31/08/2005 20:04:48
| | | In my post three simple questions ask for three simple observations. It wasn’t done. You must follow my instructions in order to understand the method of my challenge. It is my challenge. An experiment was offered. Nothing more. I chose the simple method, the a.b.c.s. just as I find the study of dynamics began with simple observation and from there to principles and laws. It did not begin with theory, but was kept as simple as possible relating to observations. I chouse to do the same. You are getting ahead of everything, adding too much too soon, cramming it all together, stating argumentative ideas as authoritative facts and causing confusion. Each few things to be discussed must be kept to a minimum and be treated fully back and forth, and back and forth again in debate until our conflicting understandings have been made clear and simple. Then we can proceed to the next few things, you see.
Your reply is the perfect example of why no one understands gyroscopic phenomena and why so many wrongly, but totally believe they do. You seem so egger to show what you know that you will not hear, will not follow another’s orderly thought processes, will not respond to the examples given, nor stick to the experiment offered, but start jumping around all over the place. It is almost as if people were in fear of being proven wrong. I find this situation kind of like when I was a kid and used to have to tell the more enthusiast ladies, ‘Dear, if you don’t stop shouting unchallenged theories in unknown tongs to the top of your lunges and don’t stop bouncing around all over the place how am I going to a good job for you? Be patient. I’ll get you there.” You highly intelligent man, you Momentous you that I do admire, why’d you cool a little till you know how I’m going to do it? It is my challenge. I made it. It belongs to me. There must be rules made to any debate in order for there to be a debate. The instructions if they will be followed are: One bounce at a time please. One jump at a time. One step at a time. After observations have been made, stated, confirmed and accepted beyond doubt, we should then be able to argue the results, but not argue what we believed, nor the reasons we believed, nor past theories, you see. Let us first set down the truth of observation, then reason back and forth why and how it happened that way. If anyone starts bouncing away from these observations, the only things we can all agree on, that we saw with our own eyes, then I’ll call them back to reality. Later each man may skip around as he pleases. I intend to offer a series of observations to be confirmed by others. I sure do hope it will simple, a few points taken at a time and completed, until each controversy has been argued in detail according to the wits we are blessed.
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The a.b.c. questions were “what do you see?” No answer was given.
Let us try again.
Place a toy gyro on a glass table. Slow the rotation speed, until the gyro will spiral downward from a 30o alignment until it touches the table within a period of about two seconds more or less.
(a.) What are the actions of the base of the pedestal against the glass?
Describe in detail the action you are certain happened.
(b.) What dose the gyro do once it touches the glass?
Describe in detail the action you are certain happened.
(c.) What dose the pedestal do once the gyro touches the glass?
Describe in detail the action you are certain happened.
Don’t describe ‘why’ and ‘how’ you believe the action occurred just yet. There will be plenty of time for you to do that. Your present description will be primarily for the benefit of your mind, but also for others. Cement what ‘YOU SAW’ beyond doubt and confirm it for everyone. You and I and we can go from there.
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| Answer: |
Momentus - 31/08/2005 22:49:51
| | | Hi Glenn
It is not sufficient to say "toy gyro" and expect someone who has not got a toy gyro to report "what is seen".
I have answered your challenge. I have argued my fundemental beliefs, as requested.
To paraphrase
a) tower moves in opposite direction to gyro
b) gyro bounces
c) tower moves back to start position.
All the above is subject to the fact that these actions are determined by the detail of the non gyro mass of your toy.
Momentus
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| Answer: |
Glenn Hawkins - 01/09/2005 00:01:31
| | | Hi Momentus,
You did it well. Thank you. I’m beholding. I will tell you something. I have admired your work several times on this site, finding you intelligent and uniquely knowledgeable and capable of good description. I admire those things. I hope someone else will do the descriptions in different and more exacting detail following yours. If not I can eventually do that from where you began and ended.
You mentioned nutations. If you’d like to see it explained in detail you can go to the main forum page near the bottom. Glenn Hawkins - 11/01/2005 02:46:52 A SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF GYROSCOPIC BEHAVEIOR PARTICULARILY TO DO WITH NUTATION If you disagree I'm ok with that certainly. Why not? You know this is an open forum for disagreement. But mind you, everything listed there is pure observation (you can see it happening that way). None of it is theory, which I never entirely trust. Prove it mechanically with clarity and completeness is the way I wish to understand and convey. Consequently all therein was deduced only to the simplest of principles based entirely on observation. You also might enjoy looking at http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/gyro_s1_nu_avi.html
You mentioned Nitro’s good Law. Yes, isn't it a good one. You can go to {Christmas Lecture in the Gallery 3.76 MB 15. Air gyro. Time 1:28 Proving there is no/little momentum.} Use stop-action again and again at 1:28 and you will see the most perfect example of the Law in action, except that its effect is invisible, supper quick and tricky enough to have led to the most astounding misconceptions I’ve ever encountered. To this day people misunderstand, just as my most admired, Professor Liftwate misunderstood. That particular type of test and others like it is flawed and has caused problems in the advance of inertia propulsion. No one has seen into the truth of it and probably will not until the trickeries of how the test is examined in a series of effects, a chain of reaction, caused by Nitro’s Law is revealed. Careful examination can explain that in all ways inertia, centrifuge and momentum are always produced and present when mater is traveling in a curvature of any kind by anything, and that why A GYRO DOSE NOT EXIBITS THESE EFFECTS WHEN STOPPED IN THE WAY OF THE VIDEO. IN OTHER TYPES OF TEST YOU CAN EXTRACT ALL THESE EXISTING EFFECTS AND FORCES. “AS GENTAL AS A LAMB” YES, BUT NOT ALWAYS IF YOU DO IT RIGHT. Eventually I intend to argue the how and why of it all and offer observable condition in this thread, but one thing at a time. Anyway you can look at the film and think that some guy says that Nitro’s Law is doing strange things to mislead the mind and that no body has noticed. Later. Much later.
We’re not ready. I’m not ready, and I’m the only one who knows how I think and why I think and how I will argue and what I will argue. Later. Until then anyone can only reiterate what has already been reiterated. It could be said I do not know my mind, but others certainly don’t know my mind. Any could champion the issues again. But, any must wait to see ‘what’ and ‘how’ and ‘why’ and the ‘way’ of my thoughts before debating my mind if you’d like to. Don’t you see?
*Many years ago a new Orleans attorney attempting to prove a conspiracy in the magic bullet theory in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy told a jury: “Theoretical sciences can prove an elephant can hang over a cliff with his tail wrapped around a daisy.” He was scoffing, but he was serious, something he’d heard in college probably.
I think I’d rather enjoy watching an elephant do the marvelous trick, but I’d need proof more and less theory that he could do it. I wouldn’t wont the elephant to get hurt. I like elephants. Don’t you like elephants too?*
Back to the little observations I ask for please.
I have enjoyed corresponding with you. I take you very seriously an am a bit of an admirer of you and a couple others. I’m still studding your first response.
Best Regards,
Hawkins
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| Answer: |
Glenn Hawkins - 01/09/2005 18:55:27
| | | Hi Momentus,
Well! I finished studying the main body of your work and it is excellent. You are a very careful person. I myself don’t much use the linear coordinal system with its potential for angles to measure distances, but rather use geometric arches of motion and curving victors, but sometimes for an engineering-like understanding use linear victors too. For me every point of potential gyroscopic motion resides inside an invisible spear that I can imagine from within and without. Paths taken are slices, which are lines that spiral in concave and convex space. I do this because all our motion is curving and none of it straight and never maintains the perfect plain you said a perfect gyro would. See how easy phi used with 3 dimensional degrees can give you distance and from there relative speeds, neither of which I currently have need of? Imperfect precession orbits that aren’t suppose to be there, but are there, or in some way make their constrained effect known is where you get in trouble. ‘Sorry. Ignore that sentence.’
I can easily convert to your methods and can agree almost entirely with the findings you’ve published. Neat huh? From different approaches we find the same results. These are primarily our differences, method and vision. We’re in enough agreement that the potential to find little imperfections aren’t worth bothering about. Anyway, I congratulate you for the careful work that must have taken years to find and formulate. Bless you for your hard work that the world ignores.
Sincerely,
Hawkins
Back to the little a.b.c. questions.
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Glenn Hawkins - 07/09/2005 02:40:44
| | | Today I’m a little happy. I must enjoy it quickly. It doesn’t happen often and never last long enough.
Inertia propulsion is real. Its been produced several times by various people. We just cannot accept it. Really we can’t. Alex Jones did it. Professor Liftwate did it with a curving train. I’ve done it with a platform that curves left, then right, then left again and so on continuously. The curving counters each to the other so that you end up with a straight path. I’ve also done it powerfully with a heavy spinning, wobbling disk between two greasy surfaces and struck at a right angle with a greased sledgehammer. Watch out you don’t get killed. Keep a half-high horizontal wall separating you from the disk. The disk accelerates much faster than would be from the force alone of the sledgehammer blow. (Ask me how before you do it.) The Jones, Liftwate and my method are all very old methods. A reasonable guess is that Macmad and Kid have done something more than has been said. It seems that there just has to have been more that weren’t reported. Well, I too have trouble believing in inertia propulsion. I’m beaten to death with physic. I do it to myself, but inertia propulsion has already been done.
The methods above are real, but limited as you know, mine also. The force is there, but the machines we wish to build have to be much, much more complicated. I’m real sure that more has to be known before we waste our money in building.
Today I’m a little happy because I drug out my trove of old gyros. (I work by memory.) and did the little a.b.c. tests which reveal what I'd hope they would. I will need confirmations. I learned already without confirmations your not going anywhere on this site, or probably anywhere else. Until you understand these tests I’m pretty sure your not going anywhere either. Understanding the tests reveal some (from what I’ve read here) unknown conditions that require solution in your design.
I will report the results with explanations sometime later. Maybe afterwards a few of you will wish to confirm them. My hope is that you succeed.
Hawkins,
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Glenn Hawkins - 10/09/2005 15:02:02
| | | These low-speed rpm tests prove nothing of value that I can see. I have recently found them to be inconclusive and maybe misleading. Ignore them and ignore me. I made a mistake. Sorry.
Hawkins,
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