Eric Laithwaite's Talk on Gyroscopes w/ Demos

[TinselKoala]

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.

[TinselKoala]

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.

[MileHigh]

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.

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.

[mondrasek]

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.

[TinselKoala]

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.