Can someone explain what's going on here?

[TinselKoala]

This is another one of those scientific tests that shows absolutely nothing.
The first step is to remove the human control input and see if the result is the same as the perceived result.

I've done that, and it is. If you take a spinning gyro rotor out on a horizontal shaft, suspended by one end of the shaft, the thing won't drop down, it will stay horizontal and precess, that is it will rotate along a vertical axis through the suspension point. The "nod" will slowly droop as the precession continues and the system loses energy. BUT.... here is the key.... if you drive the system in the precession direction faster than it normally wants to precess.... the rotor will _lift up_ just as Laithewaite shows in the video, with very little driving force in the precessing direction and no upward force needed at all.

SO Laithewaite is doing just what he said: he's pushing it along in the direction it already wants to go-- the precession direction, in a circle around him as the axis. And by doing so the rotor wants to climb up, seemingly on its own.

It is an uncanny and not at all intuitive effect. But it is completely real and happens just as Laithewaite shows, and I can vouch for the fact that it does it just the same without human help.

I do not yet know if the lack of centrifugal force that he claims is true, but the "levitation" caused by forced precession definitely is.

[evolvingape]

If your interested in this effect I highly recommend getting one of these...

http://www.powerballs.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP-ydJ4HIoA

You can actually feel the balance of forces in play with this "little toy" and it is an amazing experience. I wore the bearing out on mine, but I do like to push it to breaking point.

When you get to the limit of force that your arm can control, at maximum RPM for you, it becomes unstable  or appears to, it remains stable in it's own rotational space / time but you can no longer contain it... and thus... lose control!

You honestly will not believe what it feels like, which is why I am a proponent of using your physical awareness senses to experience reality in the ultimate quest of answering the question... "Why Am I"... from which everything else follows...

Update...

On impulse I went and grabbed my old powerball from the box in the garage where my subconscious told me it was resting... I powered that bad boy up with a flick of the lace... a resonant wrist working on feedback with the brain processing and it was racing at top speed in seconds... it made a horrendous noise... and woke the baby up! Yep that bearing is shot! and now I got earache too courtesy of the missus for my troubles... *sigh*

Oh well... that powerball with an integral coil and neodymium ball magnet as a frictionless bearing for portable hand held power generation that I thought of years ago will have to wait a while longer...

[lumen]

I've done that, and it is. If you take a spinning gyro rotor out on a horizontal shaft, suspended by one end of the shaft, the thing won't drop down, it will stay horizontal and precess, that is it will rotate along a vertical axis through the suspension point. The "nod" will slowly droop as the precession continues and the system loses energy. BUT.... here is the key.... if you drive the system in the precession direction faster than it normally wants to precess.... the rotor will _lift up_ just as Laithewaite shows in the video, with very little driving force in the precessing direction and no upward force needed at all.

SO Laithewaite is doing just what he said: he's pushing it along in the direction it already wants to go-- the precession direction, in a circle around him as the axis. And by doing so the rotor wants to climb up, seemingly on its own.

It is an uncanny and not at all intuitive effect. But it is completely real and happens just as Laithewaite shows, and I can vouch for the fact that it does it just the same without human help.

I do not yet know if the lack of centrifugal force that he claims is true, but the "levitation" caused by forced precession definitely is.

I am only saying that he is perceiving that there is no weight on the end he is supporting. In fact the rapidly rotating disk only serves to resist angle change and the full weight is translated to the end he is holding.
The precession is caused by gravity trying to change the angle as it's supported only by the shaft end several feet away and he must rotate it in the opposite direction of the normal precession caused by gravity otherwise it would translate to the same direction as gravity and move downward.
In any case, the full weight is translated to the supporting point and the spinning wheel does not float as he indicates but simply applies angular force to the shaft and lifts itself from the end of the shaft he is holding.

[TinselKoala]

I am only saying that he is perceiving that there is no weight on the end he is supporting. In fact the rapidly rotating disk only serves to resist angle change and the full weight is translated to the end he is holding.

Yes, that is right.

The precession is caused by gravity trying to change the angle as it's supported only by the shaft end several feet away and he must rotate it in the opposite direction of the normal precession caused by gravity otherwise it would translate to the same direction as gravity and move downward.

No, that is not right. He is pushing it _faster_ in the normal precession direction to make it go up, just as he says in the video. If you retard the natural precession it will drop downward. Believe me, this is true. I can't show you the apparatus here, unfortunately, as it belongs to someone else, but it works just as the Professor says.

In any case, the full weight is translated to the supporting point and the spinning wheel does not float as he indicates but simply applies angular force to the shaft and lifts itself from the end of the shaft he is holding.

The wheel does not float, but it does indeed climb upwards. When you provide an outside force, a small one, pushing in the _same direction_ as the precession, accelerating that motion, the force you are applying is translated through 90 degrees and serves to raise the rotor. When the raised rotor in the test apparatus I have here hits the topmost physical stop, an even more uncanny thing happens: the input force you had to provide in the precessing direction... goes away. The rotor will stay at the top stop as long as the device is precessing ... coasting now ... faster than its natural precessing rate. As the friction in the bearings of the vertical precession axis slow the coasting down to the natural precession rate, then the rotor begins nodding back down, and the precession itself happens at a constant rate. The axis bearings again continue to subtract energy though, so the "nod" increases as the rotor drops, but the rate of precession remains the same, within limits defined by the speed of the rotor and its energy storage in angular momentum.

Really. I'd like to show the apparatus but I just don't have permission to.

[lumen]

I see, the precession is the angle change required to counter the angle force caused by gravity so moving it faster should counter gravity more and raise the wheel.
Now because centrifugal force is indistinguishable from gravity, one should be able to build a wheel with smaller wheels on it's perimeter and rotate it to a point where the centrifugal force is about 100 times gravity. Then the angular precession on the outer wheels could be used to apply a upward force many times that of gravity while another wheel applies the entire weight of the unit onto the first disk and because gravity was the weaker force lift would be generated.
Ok, I get it now.