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12 May 2024 04:58
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Question |
| Asked by: |
Peter Burton |
| Subject: |
Sandy Kidd |
| Question: |
Dear Sandy,
Many thanks for your prompt, interesting and in-depth replies. I didn't think you would reply so quickly. I, and I'm sure many others too, would love to see your next book whenever it becomes published. I just hope that you are able to include everything in it that you would like. It is such a great pity that you were prevented from including photographs, sketches and engineering diagrams from your work and other's work as I think that would have been a great boon to all who bought your book and, I'm sure, would have increased sales accordingly. The publisher was very much in error when he stipulated that the public would be put off by the inclusion of photos and diagrams as these themselves speak a thousand words and help to clarify a lot of the textual explanations.
Although I have not experimented with gyros myself (no workshop facilities), I'm very much interested in their application when applied to the conversion of rotary to linear motion. I don't think this violates Newton's 3rd law for the following reasoning (ala Prof. Laithwaite): Picture a flywheel mounted in an inner gimbal which itself is mounted in an outer gimbal - the classical gyro setup. When the gyro's outer gimbal is forced, the inner gimbal and flywheel will instantly begin to rotate and will instantly come to rest as soon as the forcing is removed, ie. the professor proved that there is seemingly no inertia at the beginning of the inner gimbal's rotation and no momentum when it stops - inertialess and momentumless motion. This is the clue that Prof. Laithwaite latched onto and is the reason why I think that reactionless linear motion is (somehow) possible - if you imagine that the gyro is attached to a vehicle to be propelled linearly and, by some means, the momentumless movement of the inner gimbal is transformed into the vehicle's translational motion then you have a true reactionless drive.
To summarise: the starting and stopping of the inner gimbal shows NO inertia or momentum! (see the profs. Christmas lectures where he proved this on the bench, or his book by the same name "Engineer Through The Looking Glass, ch4). If only this effect could be converted to translational motion then we would have a winner! If you can start without inertia, translate some distance, then stop without momentum (as the gyro's inner gimbal does - albeit rotationally) then you are not violating the 3rd law. If only.
On a different note, do tell us what you think of Prof. Laithwait's Pat.5860317, figs. 10 & 11 where linear reaction to the vehicle is obtained by translating the massive flywheel longitudinally in the first half of the cycle, then allowing the flywheel to freely return to its starting position in the second half of the cycle by free precession (NOT forced precession - free precession imparts no force into the pivot at the remote end of the flywheel's axle) thereby not 'undoing' the reaction previously imparted to the vehicle in the first half of the cycle.
Best Regards,
Peter Burton.
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| Date: |
5 March 2007
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