Can someone explain what's going on here?

[Pirate88179]

Which way is the top spinning?


Bill

[Pirate88179]

Maybe not, you could be talking about one of Sandy Kidd's demonstrations. Again, not faked, exactly, but not what it seems either.

http://www.gyroscopes.org/propulsion.asp

That looks a lot like what I remember.  It was a long time ago when I saw the documentary.

Thanks,

Bill

[TinselKoala]

I seem to remember Tk had a video... something like a motor on a gimbal mounted on a rod of some sort.

Yes, I think you mean the one where I took a powered aircraft gyro in its housing but out of its own gimbals, and mounted it so that it could be driven around an axis at right angles to its rotation axis, but around the same center, with power fed thru sliprings. This was hung out on a pivoted arm/yoke assembly that "gyrated" in interesting ways when the precession motor was turned on. That is also an illustration of forced precession but is more complicated than Laithewaite's simple demonstration of forced precession around the gyro's natural precession axis. I call that demo the "drunken robot".

[TinselKoala]

That looks a lot like what I remember.  It was a long time ago when I saw the documentary.

Thanks,

Bill

You're welcome.

Kidd used a counterbalance system, where most of the weight of his gyro assembly was taken up by a cord running up over a set of pulleys over to a counterbalance weight. So when the gyro system was spinning... or vibrating.... the apparent weight of the system would decrease enough for the counterweight to descend, pulling the gyro system up, looking like it was truly levitating. This isn't a real deception on Sandy's part... he was entirely sincere and worked really hard for many years, and maybe still is. But it is self-deception nevertheless, as a vibrating system would behave the same way without gyros at all, just from getting the vibrations right. As is amply shown by the many Dean Drives, Cox Drives, Tolchin devices and other inertial or propellantless propulsion / antigravity systems out there.

Incidentally, the same sort of counterweight lift system was used by TTBrown in his electric flying saucer demonstrations. The heavy saucer electrodes weren't lifted completely by his field effects or corona winds.... just enough lift was required to allow the counterweight to start descending. The CW is what lifted most of the weight of the apparatus.

[sparks]

Which way is the top spinning?


Bill

doesn't matter-hint train tracks going north and south has one rail worn more than the other