Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Precession of a gyroscope
I have arranged a gyroscope at the front of the room in the manner
shown above. We'll pretend that the rod connecting all the pieces
is massless, and make a few other approximations along the way.
We will use units of grams and centimeters
for this exercise, so be sure to use g = 980 cm/s^2.
For our purposes,
component mass dist from axis
---------------------------------------------------------------------
disk M = 1700 g L = 14.1 cm R = 12.6 cm
weight 1 m1 = 900 g d1 = 25.3 cm
weight 2 m2 = 40 g d2 = 30.4 cm
weight 3 m3 = 50 g d3 = 19.5 cm
---------------------------------------------------------------------
- What is the moment of inertia of the entire gyroscope
around the supporting post?
- The disk is free to rotate around the rod independent of
all the other objects.
If I rotate the disk with angular velocity
omega in a counterclockwise direction,
as seen from the door of the classroom,
what is the moment of inertia of the disk around its center?
- What is the angular momentum of the disk around its center
as it rotates with omega? Don't forget
to specify a direction.
- Plug into two particular values of omega,
corresponding to 320 RPM and 200 RPM.
Compute the angular momentum of the spinning disk for each case.
Now, consider the force of gravity. It pulls all four objects
straight down: the three weights and the disk.
- What is the net torque on the gyroscope around the supporting post?
Supply both a magnitude and a direction.
- Suppose that the disk is spinning, so that the
gyroscope has some angular momentum.
Write a vector equation which relates
three quantities:
the initial angular momentum,
the torque around the support post,
and the new angular momentum after a short time dt.
- The initial angular momentum points towards the door
of the classroom. If I release the gyroscope so that
gravity's torque begins to act on it, in which direction
will the angular momentum CHANGE?
After just a very short time, the angular momentum will
point in a slightly different direction.
However, the magnitude of the angular momentum of the disk
will not change (if we ignore the gradual slowing of the rotation
due to friction and small effects).
If we measure the little angle d phi by which the angular
momentum vector
has changed in radians, then the size of the change dL
can be expressed as
- Use algebra to write an equation which expresses the
rate at which the angle phi changes with time,
in terms of quantities you know.
- Compute this precession frequency for
the two choices of disk spin rate: 320 RPM and 200 RPM.
- Compute the precession period for
the two choices of disk spin rate: 320 RPM and 200 RPM.
Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.