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28 November 2024 22:52
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| Asked by: |
Glenn Hawkins |
| Subject: |
Special mechanics of the gyroscope |
| Question: |
Special mechanics of the gyroscope
By Glenn Marion Hawkins
This is a complete description of the mechanical aspects of precession, of how and why gyroscopes function including that which had remained a mystery.
Inertia is a constant quality of mass that resists acceleration. Gyroscopic deflections occur because inertia resistance to force is greatly increased. During fast curving motion along with other factors, the power of sideway inertia resistance is tremendously increased.
Consider inertia in linear travel. A mass travels through space in a straight line for one mile at 100 miles per hour. A rocket of relatively very weak power is attached sideways to the forward moving mass. After one mile the mass is pushed off course by the right angle rocket force until its path has curved 180 degrees.
Using the same example, except that the mass is traveling at 100 MPH, the mass is forced to curve only 1.8 degrees off course. This is because at greater forward speed the same right angle rocket had only 1/100 as much time to apply its sideways force at the end of the one mile.
Linear traveling and tilting rotation act the same way for the same reasons relating to side-ways inertia resistance. When a wheel is rotating in a plane, though the motion is circular, it is nevertheless rotating within the confines of a straight plane. The faster the rotation of a wheel that is tilting wheel, the less time there is for gravity to exert its force— per each rotation.
As the gyroscope falls in a vertical curve around the pedestal, its top portion is always tilting outward away from the pedestal. At the same time, the bottom potion of the wheel tilts inward toward the pedestal.
Imagine a wheel made of a very thin steel that can be bent. The thin wheel must tilt toward gravity in order to create the deflections and gyroscopic functions. As it does, the increased power of inertia resistance seeks to hold the outer rim in its rotation plane. Therefore the thin wheel bends in resistance. The top portion of the wheel bends curving toward the pedestal, while the bottom bends outward away from the pedestal.
The condition can be likened to a bent spring. The spring so compressed holds ready to spring back with momentum. The compressed upper and lower springs are rotated to an area where no vertical resistance exist. That area is the horizontal diameter of the wheel which acts as a swivel between top and bottom. Here the spring uncoils and the spring-back releasing its stored torque as momentum forward and rearward of the wheel, which twists the wheel into precession. If the wheel is thick and does not bend, think in terms of molecules and atoms being squeezed toward the increased inertial resistance and then released to carry momentum as in spring-back.
At horizontal, the momentum collides into a new and different inertial resistance because the horizontal tilting around the pedestal acts exactly like the vertical tilting. The wheel would seek to bend toward the colliding momentum. The force of gravity is then deflected by the collisions and the deflections are further rotated toward the vertical upper and lower positions of the wheel. In this way, the wheel is held aloft by the vertical and opposite torque of the wheel.
The speed of precision and the speed of gravity is a veritable ratio. When angular momentum is great, the collisions are stronger, and more of the strength of deflections are rotated toward the vertical. At the same time, less strength and speed remain in the horizontal position of the wheel. So little strength is left to precession that a paper napkin can stop a toy gyroscope from precession. When that happens, the wheel is no longer moving, tilting around the pedestal, and there is no horizontal inertial resistance, and collisions and deflections are not possible. The gyroscope collapses into gravity.
PROFESSOR ERIC LAITHWAITE’S FAMOUS 40-POUND WHEEL DEMONSTRATION
There are demonstrations of a man forcing a gyroscope into faster precession. He holds up a three-foot shaft connected at a levered distance to a forty pound wheel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeyDf4ooPdo
The two questions that arise has baffled everyone: how is he able to grip, hold and lift so much weight at such a levered distance?. Additionally, why does the wheel appears to poses no weight at all as he lifts it without effort?
1 By holding the torqued weight close into his body, as the man does, most of the weight is supported by the skeletal frame of his body and so he exerts less energy in holding it. The simplest example is an African woman caring a heavy burden on her head while exerting little energy.
2 A gyroscope torques the force of gravity to the pivot where it becomes a downward force. Therefore the man’s hands act as a pivot and he does not need to grip and twist his wrist against torque as it is converted into vertical force downward. His hands are free to act as a pivot rotating in the open cup of his hand.
3 In lifting weight we are prone to assume that extra force downward is created. But the energy the lifter exerts is necessary only because of the leverage disadvantage he creates in his limbs and joints as he bends his elbows. Gravity is the same at one foot off the floor as seven feet off the floor. The true resistance is so little that when a man standing on scales lifts a barbell, the scales hardly measure a difference during lifting. That difference is only the inertial resistance from accelerating a mass. A baby anchored to a ship in space could nudge so large a mass forward with ease. That is the only amount of resistance the upward tilting of the wheel creates.
The lifting torque created by the wheel has already been paid by the energy necessary to suspend it in space, and so little extra torque is necessary to lift it further--inertia resistance only.
4 The rising arc of the wheel is caused by strengthening deflections from the man’s right angle push. The rising arc can be vectored in two directions, inward and upward. When the man’s hands lift, his levering force counters the inward force direction of the wheel toward the pivot. Therefore the wheel cannot move inward, only upward. Two torques are created, that of the wheel, countered by that of the man. The wheel continues to rise in one a dimensional direction, 180 degrees, and in veritable amounts and distance equal to the man’s lift. The energy required is divided. The wheel furnishes half the energy and the man furnishes half. Moreover, the man applied torque not at behind the wheel, but to the rear of the shaft at a leverage disadvantage. He had to push harder. The man experiences only light inertial resistance in slowly accelerating a mass upward, and only half of that as the wheel furnishes the other half. He actually lifts no weight at all.
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| Date: |
18 November 2018
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