HI All,
This is very interesting on gyroscopes, I already have a experiment I want to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g60ZCcquCl8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g60ZCcquCl8)
Tom
Quote from: TommeyLeeReed on December 15, 2014, 09:41:12 AM
HI All,
This is very interesting on gyroscopes, I all ready have a experiment I want to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g60ZCcquCl8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g60ZCcquCl8)
Tom
That Christmas show had lots of neat demonstrations. Eric Laithewaite later ended up retracting and apologizing for incorrect statements that he made during the program.
Quote from: MarkE on December 15, 2014, 10:09:58 AM
That Christmas show had lots of neat demonstrations. Eric Laithewaite later ended up retracting and apologizing for incorrect statements that he made during the program.
He was sadly poorly treated, he was one of my professors when I was a student. Do you know what is a problem with scientists? they do not like anyone to be better than them ;)
regards
Mike
Centraflow,
I agree.
I seen a few of his videos, and everyone makes us rethink the normal thinking.
This is the real problem being a teacher of any field, you step out of line and they will discredited you at no end.
This also happen to John Mack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fCYmyi2G5E (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fCYmyi2G5E)
Tom
Thank you for your input, I believe there could be something there.
This is my design to experiment a theory of mine.
Tom
Please see the image below.
The white thing on the right is a digital force gauge. The platform supporting the main "nod angle" pivot is on a linear bearing so it can slide a little bit out and in, and the gauge measures the centrifugal force wrt the vertical axis. The heavy gyro rotor is spun up by compressed air blast (nozzle and mount and pressure regulator not shown.) The electronics board is an Arduino with wi-fi and onboard battery so that the system can record and transmit wirelessly the measured parameters, which are 1) rotor RPM from an optical tachometer sensor; 2) centrifugal force from the force gauge; 3) rate and position around the vertical axis from a USDigital optical encoder; 4) "nod" angle from a sensitive servo-pot; 5) elapsed time.
The vertical axis is driven by a gearmotor and timing belt (nonslip toothed kind) and a one-way helicopter clutch bearing, so the gearmotor can be stopped and the rotation around the vertical axis can continue without undue drag. There is also a hand-crank arrangement (not shown) that can replace the gearmotor drive so that the experimenter can feel for himself the forces applied in the precession direction.
Good luck with your experiment. Be sure to incorporate some of the features of this apparatus, so that you can discover for yourself what I have discovered. Most especially you should include an upward travel stop for the nod angle, and a hand crank to drive it around the vertical axis so that you can feel for yourself the force required to force the precession... and so that you can feel what happens when the nod reaches the upward stop. You should also have real-time monitoring of the rotor RPM -- which should _not_ be motor-driven during the experiment -- so that you can see just where the power comes from to achieve the various motions.
You don't really need sliprings. Your rotor should be quite heavy and on good bearings. The vertical axis should be locked while your motor spins up the rotor to sufficient speed, then the motor disconnected and the vertical axis unlocked. I generally spin up the 2 kg rotor to 4000 RPM to start, this allows nearly an hour of total spin time unpowered, and allows plenty of time for several "experimental runs" between 3500 rpm and 1500 rpm. My apparatus has a pin on a spring that keeps the rotor shaft horizontal during spin-up, then until it lifts up a bit due to the forced precession applied by gearmotor or crank along the vertical axis, then the spring retracts the pin and the nod is free to go where it wants to go, between the lower stop (as shown in the photo) and the upper stop about the same angle above horizontal.
Guys, are you aware of this? Proceed to 8:59:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNLk5G3hgRg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNLk5G3hgRg)
and corresponding patent:
http://www.google.com/patents/US6705174 (http://www.google.com/patents/US6705174)
https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US6705174.pdf (https://drive.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US6705174.pdf)
Looks like a gyroscope doesn't have to be mechanical in traditional meaning of a flywheel. This one uses electromagnetic field.
According to what I can read in the patent and the descriptions of the drawings, this system is a set of tubes or channels that contain within them a heavy rotating mass: in other words, an electromagnetically driven rotor. It's a flywheel, or set of flywheels, without axles. This makes it possible to construct the system with three orthogonal planes of rotation, something that is hard to do with flywheels on axles.
It's a good patent, an interesting system, but it still works by having heavy masses rotating in a plane, or several planes.
Yes, TK. You are right; as always anyway (b'coz you don't use shortcuts... er... like us) :-[ . Though my description above is not very precise, I meant just that. And I was wrong. Sorry; I promise to read in the future to avoid such "revelations".
The gyroscope configuration mentioned in that video was invented by Léon Foucault in 1852. Here's more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope)
UFO mecha prop
Quote from: webby1 on December 16, 2014, 01:40:12 PM
Nice testbed TK,, what did it do?
I get that it spun and stuff,, so what other than the stuff Laithwaite showed?
Mostly it sits there and collects dust!
;)
1. It shows what Laithwaite _showed_, and it shows the reason for it.
2. It falsifies his claim that there is no centrifugal force happening during precession or forced precession.
3. It illustrates another phenomenon that will blow your mind, when you crank the thing in forced precession until the nod motion hits the top travel stop. You'll think you truly have discovered antigravity, until you actually read the scale it's sitting on.
Build it for yourself and see for yourself. You don't need all the fancy electronics and sensors or even the horizontal linear bearing. Don't make the mistake of counterweighting the rotor, though, because if the rotor is prevented from "nodding", the apparatus won't precess at all. It needs to be free to nod, in order to precess properly, which seems very strange because while running it won't actually "nod" much at all as long as the rotor is spinning fast enough. If you stop the precession the rotor will fall down to the lower travel stop immediately, and if you prevent this by pinning it horizontally or counterbalancing it, it won't precess.
You will note on my apparatus that the force gauge and its mount remain horizontal, and there is a counterweight added under the gauge. This is to balance the whole head assembly so that the weight on the precession axis is straight down. The rotor and its shaft, though are pivoted at the center of the linear bearing platform so that the "nod" motion is not counterbalanced; this is so that the nod can proceed freely and make the whole thing rotate around the precession (vertical) axis.
It is important to use a "oneway bearing" or overrunning clutch, you know the kind, for the precession drive motor / hand crank, so that the thing can be driven around the precession axis faster than it wants to precess - this is the "forced precession" which makes the rotor rise, as in the Laithwaite demos. But you have to be able to stop driving, and let the thing continue to coast around the precession axis until it slows on its own and resumes normal precession caused by the "nod" of the rotor. Hence the need for the overrunning clutch/ one-way bearing. You can get quite good one-way bearings for cheap at the RC helicopter hobby shop, they are used in 450 and up sized electric and diesel helicopters to allow autorotation when the power is off.
There is no change in weight. There can certainly be changes in weight _measurements_ but this does not mean there is a change in weight. There are reaction forces that change direction, there are vibrations that can couple into mechanical suspension systems, with electrically powered motors there are electromagnetic effects that can interact with scale electronics and sensor mechanisms. There are even aerodynamic effects that can be quite significant; a rotor spinning at 4000 rpm can have quite an effect on the air that is in contact with it, creating thrusts in various directions. Gyroscopes, like magnets, are notoriously difficult to weigh accurately, but with care and thought, it can be done... and when it is done, there is no change in weight.
One good way to test this is to use several different methods for weighing your system. If there is a true change in weight, not contaminated by measurement artefacts, then every method should report the same weight change. If you are getting the typical contamination, then different weighing systems may be expected to respond differently and may give you different "changes" in weight.
It is ridiculously easy to make a spring or counterweight scale/balance read increases or decreases in weight, using vibration and changing force vectors. This is what misleads people like Sandy Kidd, Professor Laithwaite, Dean, Cox, and others into believing that they have discovered some kind of weight loss or reactionless thrust in their spinning or vibrating systems.
QuoteIt is ridiculously easy to make a spring or counterweight scale/balance read increases or decreases in weight, using vibration and changing force vectors. This is what misleads people like Sandy Kidd, Professor Laithwaite, Dean, Cox, and others into believing that they have discovered some kind of weight loss or reactionless thrust in their spinning or vibrating systems.
These are things that "blow my mind." How can you possibly imagine that the mass of something would change just because it is spinning? Meanwhile you are looking at a scale with some kind of AC force vector superimposed over the "DC weight" and you are not going to suspect there might be an issue with your measuring instrument? Unbelievable.
It just goes to show you that in the final analysis, having a title means nothing. It's what you say that counts. It's just like that guy with the rotating laser experiment looking for the alleged aether. The bloody thing is a laser interferometer at the same time and the interference pattern is showing you the tubular-frame slightly fdeforming as it rotates because of the changing gravitational stresses. You just looked at how the apparatus was made and you could see that the laser alignment system would deform under gravitational stress. So the person that built the thing was clueless, and the person making the observations and drawing the conclusions was clueless.
Quote from: MileHigh on December 17, 2014, 12:38:42 PM
These are things that "blow my mind." How can you possibly imagine that the mass of something would change just because it is spinning? Meanwhile you are looking at a scale with some kind of AC force vector superimposed over the "DC weight" and you are not going to suspect there might be an issue with your measuring instrument? Unbelievable.
It just goes to show you that in the final analysis, having a title means nothing. It's what you say that counts. It's just like that guy with the rotating laser experiment looking for the alleged aether. The bloody thing is a laser interferometer at the same time and the interference pattern is showing you the tubular-frame slightly fdeforming as it rotates because of the changing gravitational stresses. You just looked at how the apparatus was made and you could see that the laser alignment system would deform under gravitational stress. So the person that built the thing was clueless, and the person making the observations and drawing the conclusions was clueless.
Ignorance is defined simply as: a state of being uninformed (lack of knowledge).
That is not a crime nor does it imply that the individual who is "ignorant" on any topic is not very intelligent in other areas.
"Idiot Savant" anyone?
So while I agree with you that it can be frustrating if you have knowledge where someone else apparently is "clueless" about (regardless of titles) a specific topic it definitely does not mean they are anything than ignorant about that topic.
Is there anyone here who wants to claim they are not ignorant on any topic who wants to raise their hand? (Sheldon Cooper need not apply)
I am sure we can all admit to (and even reference posts to) ignorance in at least some aspect of some subject. I know I can (could/will)!
So here is my comments on TK's Laithwaite experiment build: I am impressed (per usual) yet disappointed that more information is not available! I assume that TK was contracted to perform the testing and cannot openly disclose more. But the geek in me wants the charts, graphs, and rows of data that he obviously collected!
TK has alluded to learning several interesting things that he has not fully disclosed. He has also suggested that others perform the same experiments. Possibly so they can disclose what he has learned while he is contractually unable to do so???
It also appears to me that he did not find anything that is OU (unless you subscribe to the theory that he is purposely trying to mislead everyone with his open source Youtube videos!).
My 2 cents? It was a cool build and great play toy. He personally learned somethings new.
But not OU.
Yet not unimpressive!
I am seriously impressed. And jealous of the data he apparently has seen that I soooo want to see.
Here is an interesting question: Why would TK perform such a complicated and fully instrumented build if he believed it would not show anything extraordinary?
I have two hypothesis for an answer to the above:
1) He wanted to KNOW through experimental results that what he understood through physics must be fact was, in fact, FACT.
2) He was looking for the chance that the experimental results would NOT corroborate the results predicted by the math. Ie. an anomaly.
M.
That's right.
The device exhibits the closest thing to antigravity that you are likely ever to see before you on a workbench. Build it yourself and you will see how. You probably will not understand "why", though. I certainly don't. Smarter people than I have explained it to me (and I can parrot those explanations) but I guess I'm too stupid to understand or believe their explanations.
Key items for the experiment: You must be able to crank it, preferably by hand so you can feel the cranking force, around the precession (vertical) axis faster than it "wants" to precess normally, and you must be able to let it coast along this axis freely (one way bearing on precession drive system) once it reaches the "point of amazement" with the heavy rotor assembly's "nod" motion against the top travel stop.
@TK, is there any possibility that you can do a video presentation of your Laithwaite apparatus so that we can see some of the interesting behavior you found?
Quote from: mondrasek on December 18, 2014, 10:26:22 AM
@TK, is there any possibility that you can do a video presentation of your Laithwaite apparatus so that we can see some of the interesting behavior you found?
Not at the present time, sorry.
There is nothing like experiencing something for yourself, though.
Quote from: TinselKoala on December 17, 2014, 09:55:07 PM
That's right.
The device exhibits the closest thing to antigravity that you are likely ever to see before you on a workbench. Build it yourself and you will see how. You probably will not understand "why", though. I certainly don't. Smarter people than I have explained it to me (and I can parrot those explanations) but I guess I'm too stupid to understand or believe their explanations.
Key items for the experiment: You must be able to crank it, preferably by hand so you can feel the cranking force, around the precession (vertical) axis faster than it "wants" to precess normally, and you must be able to let it coast along this axis freely (one way bearing on precession drive system) once it reaches the "point of amazement" with the heavy rotor assembly's "nod" motion against the top travel stop.
Quote"Smarter people than I have explained it to me (and I can parrot those explanations")
Parrot the explanations and I'll give you a cracker.
CANGAS 110
@TK
Looking at the picture below,if i apply a force to the spinning flywheel(gyro) in the direction of the red arrow,will flywheel move in the direction of the green arrow,or will it move at right angles to the force applied(red arrow)?.
I always get a little paranoid when people ask me questions that they already know the answers to.
I presume you are initially hanging the gyro rotor straight down, so that an arrow representing gravity would be in a line along the axle but pointing straight down, and that your "pivot" is a u-joint or other system that is free to move in any direction.
What you will see will depend strongly on the length of the axle, from the pivot point to the rotor. If the axle is very long, so that your applied force results in mostly "translation", that is a straight sideways movement with very little tilting of the rotor, then the precession force will be small and you might not notice it. That is, the resulting motion will be mostly in the same direction as the applied force.
If your axle is short enough, so that your applied force produces a good tilt of the rotor out of the horizontal plane, then you will experience stronger precession and the rotor will try to move at right angles to the applied force. What you will actually see when you do the experiment is some combination of motion in the plane of the paper (the direction of applied force) and at right angles to it.
The "center" of the precession motion is in the rotor disc, not at the top of the axle where your pivot is, and if you use a flexible rotor with a rigid axle you will see the rotor itself twist and warp as you try to force the precession.
Quote from: TinselKoala on December 20, 2014, 05:36:38 AM
I always get a little paranoid when people ask me questions that they already know the answers to.
I presume you are initially hanging the gyro rotor straight down, so that an arrow representing gravity would be in a line along the axle but pointing straight down, and that your "pivot" is a u-joint or other system that is free to move in any direction.
What you will see will depend strongly on the length of the axle, from the pivot point to the rotor. If the axle is very long, so that your applied force results in mostly "translation", that is a straight sideways movement with very little tilting of the rotor, then the precession force will be small and you might not notice it. That is, the resulting motion will be mostly in the same direction as the applied force.
If your axle is short enough, so that your applied force produces a good tilt of the rotor out of the horizontal plane, then you will experience stronger precession and the rotor will try to move at right angles to the applied force. What you will actually see when you do the experiment is some combination of motion in the plane of the paper (the direction of applied force) and at right angles to it.
The "center" of the precession motion is in the rotor disc, not at the top of the axle where your pivot is, and if you use a flexible rotor with a rigid axle you will see the rotor itself twist and warp as you try to force the precession.
Believe it or not TK,i didnt know the answer to my question-thus the reason i was asking you,as i know you have had quite some experiance with gyro's-where i have very little.
I may have not stated my question correctly,and the answer you gave leaves me a little lost(didnt tell me what i needed to know). So im guessing i will have to set up something myself,and see if i get the effect im hopeing for. But i will try again asking you before i go to all that trouble. I will try with a clearer diagram (below).
First-if the flywheel is not rotating,and our jet of water is hitting the flywheel side on(as depicted),then we will have x amount of force at the pivot point that i have called force A and force B-a twisting or sheer force on the pivot pin. Now ,what i want to know is--> will force A and force B be the same if the flywheel is spinning at say 10 000 RPM as it is when the flywheel is not spinning-will gyroscopic precession lesson force A and B ?. We will asume that the water jet can rotate with the flywheel during it's precession so as it continues to hit the flywheel in the same spot.
You can think of the response of the rotor like this: When the rotor is spinning, the response to a force applied "from the side" as you have drawn it will simply act as though you are applying the force from a point 90 degrees around the rotor. That's precession in a nutshell.
But in your system there are going to be two forces acting on the rotor, one from your water jet and the other from gravity. As long as the rotor is hanging straight down the gravity force will not cause any precession, but as soon as your water jet (acting as if it were coming from 90 degrees around the rotor) causes the thing to precess out of the straight down (rotor horizontal) position, then gravity also acts to contribute to the precession. So the resultant motion of the rotor won't be purely "as if" the water jet is acting from 90 degrees but will be a combination of the precessing from the water jet and from gravity, so the rotor will move not straight toward or away from the viewer but at some angle between that and the plane of the paper.
If you didn't have any gravity, the rotor would try to move at right angles to the applied water jet force, that is, straight toward or away from the viewer, depending on the direction of rotation of the spinning rotor. Again, the length of the suspension will affect the magnitude of this motion; a very long axle will show less effect than a very short one. This is because the precession happens as a result of the rotor tilting out of the horizontal plane, and with a very long arm it won't tilt much as you push it along with your applied force. If your top suspension is rigged to "slide along" in the direction of your push, so that the rotor always remains horizontal as it is being pushed, then it won't precess since the rotor won't tilt, it will just slide along.
It might be simpler if you just eliminate the water jet and start with the axle horizontal. Then only gravity acting straight down affects your rotor, and the motion will be purely into (or out of) the plane of the drawing. If the rotor is driven at a constant speed by the motor, the whole assembly will just rotate around and around in the same plane (horizontal plane) as if you are pulling it from the side (90 degrees from the pull of gravity). If your rotor is coasting (slowing, running out of stored energy), then it will "nod" down as it goes around, until finally it is hanging vertically as in your drawing and then there is no more force acting to precess the thing. This shows that the "antigravity" effect comes from the stored energy of rotation of the rotor. The overall weight of the apparatus doesn't change, of course. (But if you allow your water jet to push from some other angle than the horizontal (sorry, before I had vertical here) , then it will affect the _measured weight_ to the extent that it is acting in the direction of gravity. Some trigonometry will tell you just how much.)
Yes, by all means construct some apparatus and explore for yourself.
You might also find this page amusing, with the Java applet.
http://butikov.faculty.ifmo.ru/Applets/Gyroscope.html (http://butikov.faculty.ifmo.ru/Applets/Gyroscope.html)
It can't be adjusted to your precise design but it should help you see what is happening and what to expect. I still haven't found anything that describes the phenomenon that you will encounter if you build and run an apparatus like mine up above, though.