Gyroscope physics

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One of the evergreens of classical mechanics demonstrations is the behavior that can be elicited from a
gyroscope.
The word 'gyroscope' was coined by the french physicist Foucault. Foucault was active in optics, in the
manufacturing and testing of lenses and mirrors, in the chemistry of photography, and he did research in
electromagnetism. Today he is mainly known for the pendulum setup that is called 'Foucault pendulum'.

History
Contact

Interactive animations
Coriolis effect
Centrifugal effect

Basic story, without math

In 1852 Foucault used a gyroscope to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. The gyroscope wheel is in a
double-axed gimbal mount, so that the force of gravity acts on the wheel's center of mass, and no torque is
acting on the wheel. Without torque to change its direction of motion a spinning gyroscope wheel will
remain pointing in the same direction.
An object left to free motion will move in a straight line. The spinning of the gyroscope wheel can be
thought of as combining two oscillations, perpendicular to each other. Each of these oscillations remains on
the same line, making the plane that is defined by the two perpendicular lines a stationary plane. Hence the
spin axis, perpendicular to the plane, keeps pointing in the same direction.

Coriolis effect in
Meteorology

Coriolis effect related

Rotational-vibrational
coupling
Oceanography:

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I will use the following naming convention: I will take the word 'gyroscope' to refer to the assembly of
gyroscope wheel and all of the suspension mount together. I will call the spinning mass - usually a
disk-shaped object - the 'gyroscope wheel'.

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Inertial oscillations
Comparison of ballistics
and inertial oscillations
Meteorology:
Cyclonic flow
The Foucault pendulum
Prelude
Main article
Elaboration
The Etvs effect
Coriolis flow meter

http://www.cleonis.nl/physics/phys512/gyroscope_physics.php

Bicycle wheel
The image shows a
demonstration from a lecture
by professor Walter Lewin.
Using an electric motor he
spins up a bicycle wheel to a
hair raising velocity, and then
he hooks up the wheel to a
rope suspended from the
ceiling. Initially, walking up to
the rope, he supports both
ends of the axle. When the
rope takes the weight the
wheel starts precessing.

Rotation
Angular momentum of
orbiting objects
Gyroscope Physics
The Earth's equatorial
bulge
Centrifugal force

Fundamentals

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Apparent motion
Inertial coordinate system
Inertial space

Classical dynamics
Quantity of motion
Least action

General physics: rotation

Picture 2, picture 3, image.

Source: MITopencourseware physics 8.01, Youtube video

35:30

The Sagnac effect

Gyroscope
Relativistic physics:
Special relativity
General relativity

Pictures 4 and 5 show a gyroscope in a multi-axed gimbal mounting. The yellow housing enables swivel,
the red housing enables pitch. The wheel's bearings rest on a fixed axle that extends out of the red
housing.
Notice especially the instant at 47:10, when professor Lewin happens to manipulate the yellow housing.
The turning of the yellow housing is transmitted to the gyroscope wheel, and just for a moment you can see
how the gyroscope wheel responds to that.

Java simulations
Created with EJS
Inertial oscillation
math
Great circles.
Ballistics and orbits

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Ballistics
Circumnavigating
pendulum
Foucault pendulum
math
Foucault rod
math
Angular acceleration
Spacestation
vertical throw
Force laws

Picture 4, picture 5, image.

Source: MITopencourseware physics 8.01, Youtube video

46:00

The demonstrations by professor Lewin are so vivid because he spins the wheels so fast. (You definitely
shouldn't try that at home.)
The purpose of this article is to show how to understand the behavior of the gyroscope in terms of the laws
of motion.

Naming conventions
Image 6 represents the gyroscope in the demonstration by professor Lewin. To emphasize the different
components I gave them contrasting colors.
Roll : spinning of the blue gyroscope wheel
Pitch : tilting of the red housing
Swivel : rotation of the yellow housing.
The swivel axis has the least freedom; the swivel axis is fixed relative to the ground. The pitch axis is

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always perpendicular to the

ground, as it is constrained
by the yellow housing. The
innermost housing, the red
housing, has the most
freedom. So the roll axis can
point in any direction. 'Roll'
has been defined as
spinning of the wheel. That
means roll is defined relative
to the wheel.

Picture 6. Image

Sustained precession
Image 7 depicts the gyroscope when it is precessing.

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The brown cylinder

represents the weight that
has been added on one end.
If the gyroscope wheel would
not be spinning the weight
would pitch that end all the
way down.
In the demonstration the spin
rate is much faster than the
precession rate, so it's
natural to think of the overall
motion as a composition of
two perpendicular uniform
rotations: rolling and
swiveling. Image 7 shows
two black arrows to depict
the wheel's two component
rotations.
Quadrants
Rather than trying to focus
on a section of wheel, trying
to track it, it's clarifying to
look at how the parts of the
wheel move through
successive quadrants. Image
8 shows one such quadrant.
As the wheel spins wheel
mass moves through that
quadrant.

Picture 7. Image
Forces and motion of a precessing gyroscope

Motion towards the swivel axis

In the quadrant shown in image 8 the mass of the wheel is moving towards the swivel axis, and so is the

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mass moving through the

diagonally opposite
quadrant.
We have that when
circumnavigating mass is
pulled closer to the axis of
rotation (the swivel axis in
this case), that mass tends
to pull ahead of the overall
circumnavigating motion.
The green arrow depicts that
tendency.
Motion away from the
swiveling axis
In the other two quadrants
the mass of the wheel is
moving away from the swivel
axis, so the mass in those
quadrants tends to lag
behind the overall swiveling
motion.
Pitching
The four green arrows in
image 7 illustrate that the
effects from each of the four
Picture 8. Image
quadrants combine to a
All wheel mass moving through the shown quadrant is moving towards the
pitching effect. The effects
swivel axis
from each of the four
quadrants add up: they
reinforce each other into a single pitching effect.

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In particular, this explains why a gyroscope wheel has its strong response at a 90 degrees angle. It's at 90
degrees because of the overall symmetry: the contribution of each of the four quadrants is the same,
therefore the response can only be at that 90 degrees angle.

The response of a spinning gyroscope wheel

Image 9 is at 48:00 into the video.
Let me go step by step over what happens at the exact instant
that the weight is added.
When the weight is positioned onto the axle rod the force
that it exerts starts to pitch the gyroscope wheel.
The pitching motion causes swiveling motion: precession.
The precessing motion adds a tendency to pitch up,
counteracting the downpitching tendency from the brown
weight.
The gyroscope settles into a sustained dynamic
configuration, neither pitching up nor pitching down.

Picture 9. Image
48:00 into the video, only seconds
away from adding a weight.

Settling into the precessing motion happens very quickly; you don't actually see it happening. It may look
as if the wheel's motion has changed directly to the final precessing motion, but in fact it has gone through
the above described process.

Self-adjusting
Due to the fact that the gyrocopic effect is a response to motion the process of settling into precessing
motion is self-adjusting: the final precessing rate is the amount of precession that keeps the wheel from
pitching down further.
Picture 10 (38:20 into the video) shows what happens when more weight is added. The added weight

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increases the torque, so the wheel pitches down some more. The
motion of pitching down causes the precession to speed up.
Note that professor Lewin increases the torque load gingerly. An
uncontrolled drop of the extra weight would add a nutation. See
the nutation section further down in this article.

Friction
If the demonstration is allowed to play its course then friction will
keep reducing the wheel's spin rate. The wheel will progressively
pitch down, with corresponding increase in precession rate.
(Actually, as the wheel pitches down the torque from gravity
becomes smaller, making the requirement for precession lower.)
Eventually the spin axis will be practically parallel to the direction
of gravity.

Picture 10. Image

38:20 into the video. Faster precession
when extra torque has caused further
pitching down.

What the torque is and isn't doing

Precession will only start if a force sets it into motion, but once precession is going it simply goes on. For
comparison: the example of circular motion, sustained by a centripetal force. The centripetal force doesn't
cause or sustain the speed; the centripetal force causes/sustains the circumstance (the circular shape of
the trajectory) that allows the speed to continue. Likewise, once there is a uniform precession going the
torque is neither causing nor sustaining the precession. The torque sustains the dynamic configuration in
which precession can exist.

Precession decay
Next, let me discuss what you see in the following YouTube gyroscope video, which according to the profile
information has been uploaded by a user named Glenn.
You can see how Glenn is swiveling the gyroscope wheel and in response the gyroscope wheel is pitching

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up and down. There are two

cross-arms, and two helical
springs act to keep those
cross-arms level. At 20
seconds into the video Glenn
starts a steady precession.
Without the springs the
gyroscope wheel would pitch
over completely, to the point
where the spin axis
coincides with the swivel
axis. (That point is the point
with lowest potential energy.)
As the cross-arms pitch a
spring is stretched until the
point is reached where the
tension matches the
tendency to pitch over.
Air friction is slowing down
Picture 11. Image
the gyroscope wheel, as
Spring tension preventing further pitching.
friction cannot be eliminated
entirely. As the spin rate
decays the tendency to pitch decreases. This allows the stretched spring to pull the cross-arms to a more
level position. The pitching motion of leveling out reduces the existing precession rate. When the
cross-arms have leveled out completely the precession has been nullified.

Nutation
A Youtube gyroscope video uploaded by Adolf Cortel shows nutation. At one minute into the video Cortel
gives a jolt to the system. That induces a nutation on top of the precession. The cycle of nutation proceeds
as follows: pitching down is converted to swiveling clockwise, which is converted to pitching up, which is

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converted to swiveling
counterclockwise, which is
converted to pitching down,
and so on. The result is that
the nutation traces out a
cone with respect to the
steady precessing motion.
Nutation is like circular
motion in the following way:
it cycles around a point of
lowest energy. If there is
damping then the nutation
spirals in, settling on the
point of lowest energy.

Picture 12. Image

This mathematical section is

A jolt induces nutation.
for corroboration. The result
matches the result that is calculated with other mathematical means (involving Euler angles).
The combined effect of the four quadrants can be calculated by integrating around the wheel, which means
integrating over an arc of 2 radians.
The purpose of the calculation is as follows: when the gyroscope wheel is precessing (as depicted in image
7) the precession gives a tendency to pitch. The derivation finds the corresponding torque.
The following integration applies the usual simplification that the gyroscope wheel is treated as if all of it's
mass is on it's circumference. An actual wheel can't be like that of course, since you need spokes. But the
mass of the spokes is much less than that of the rim, so for a first approximation the mass of the spokes

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can be neglected.
Angle around the circumference of the wheel
Force in tangential direction

Ft

Torque

= Ftr

Rolling rate

Swiveling rate

Total mass
Mass per unit of arc

M
M/(2)
Velocity component towards/away from central axis vr = rsin()R
Distance to pitch axis

sin()R
Tendency to pull ahead/lag behind overall swiveling F = -2msvr
Let me go over the entries in the above table.
- Angle around the circumference of the wheel. Let parallel to the pitch axis be = 0
- The 'force in tangential direction' refers to a force that tends to pitch the gyroscope wheel.
- The 'mass per unit of arc'. The units of arc are radians here. Total circumference is 2 radians, hence the
mass per unit of arc is M/(2)
- 'Velocity component towards/away from central axis'. At the points where the wheel rim is farthest away
from the swivel axis the velocity component in radial direction is zero. The radial valocity is maximal when
is 1/2 and 3/2.
- 'Distance to pitch axis'. Distance to the pitch axis is maximal when is 1/2 and 3/2
- 'Tendency to pull ahead/lag behind overall swiveling' I expand on that in the Appendix F=-2msvr
These elements together give the following integral over the full circumference of the wheel (the minus sign
is dropped because only the magnitude of the effect is needed):
(1)

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Rearranging, and moving factors that are not a function of outside the integration:
(2)

We have:
(3)

Combining expressions (2) and (3) gives the result:

(4)

When the spinning rate of the gyroscope wheel is far larger than the precession rate the overall angular
momentum L of the gyroscope wheel is practically identical to the angular momentum of the spinning
motion Lr, which is given by rMR. Therefore expresson 4 is to a good approximation:
(5)

Expression 5 gives the tendency to pitch that arises from the gyroscopic precession. It is proportional to the
swiveling rate s and the angular momentum Lr of the rolling gyroscope wheel.
Expression (5) matches the expression given in textbooks, where it's usually derived in the following form:
(6)

Sources:

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Eugene Butikov, professor of physics

Inertial rotation of a rigid body
Precession and nutation of a gyroscope

Appendix - Derivation of F=-2msvr

The derivation below deals with what is illustrated with image 13. The rolling moves the parts in the shown
quadrant closer to the swivel axis. And the question is: how large is the tendency to pull ahead of the
general swivel? To obtain the answer to that I go through two steps:
1. First I answer the question: if circumnavigating mass is pulled closer to the axis of rotation with a
particular radial velocity, how large will it's tangential acceleration be?
2. Then I turn that around: the amount of force that is necessary to prevent angular acceleration is
proportional to the tendency to accelerate.
Step 1. is the case where angular acceleration is not prevented (that is: no torque), which means that
angular momentum is conserved.
(7)

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Differentiating the expression

for the angular momentum:

Picture 13. Image

Repeat of image 8
(8)

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Using the chain rule to obtain an expression in terms of a factor dr/dt .

(9)

Dividing by r, and rearranging

(10)

r(d/dt) = at = the tangential acceleration.

(11)

This expression gives the tangential acceleration that occurs if there is no torque present.
Multiplying both sides with m gives the corresponding force:
(12)

The above completes step 1. of the two steps. Step 2. is to see that if at every point precisely that force is
exerted (in the opposite direction) then change of angular velocity is prevented, and the part will remain
moving in radial direction with the same velocity.

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Last time this page was modified: July 05 2015

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