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10 May 2024 21:40
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Question |
| Asked by: |
Larry Bardo |
| Subject: |
external torque |
| Question: |
In the video, http://www.gyroscopes.org/video/1hi.rm, the thread exerts an external torque to the gyroscope. Will the thread stop the gyroscope presession eventually? What will happen to the gyroscope when there is no pressesion? |
| Date: |
6 July 2006
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Answers (Ordered by Date)
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| Answer: |
Nitro MacMad - 07/07/2006 22:48:08
| | | Dear Larry Bardo,
The thread, lifting one end of the gyro cage axis, allows gravity to cause a torque, trying to change the gyro’s axis. This force, acting to change the axial angle, is precessed to cause the rotation of the gyro assembly at ninety degrees to the applied force (gravity).
Nitro’s first law states that “a gyro will precess every damn force acting to try and change its axial angle”.
So it is that the (very small) air and string twist force acting in the opposite direction to the initial direction of precession is itself precessed into a (very slow) downward precession leading, eventually, to the axis pointing directly downwards. At this point gravity, acting equally all around the gyro axis, no longer acts to change the gyros axial angle and can therefore no longer produce precession. Of course the frictions on the gyro’s axis bearings will probable cause an earlier precessional demise as well as the rotation of the cage near to the end.
Kind regards
NM
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