Concerning Gyroscopes and Other Spinning Things

[ZPDM]

with out centripetal force there be no rotation

Whenever an object moves in a circular path we know the object is accelerating because the velocity is constantly changing direction. All accelerations are caused by a net force acting on an object. In the case of an object moving in a circular path, the net force is a special force called the centripetal force (not centrifugal!). Centripetal is Latin for "center seeking". So a centripetal force is a center seeking force which means that the force is always directed toward the center of the circle. Without this force, an object will simply continue moving in straight line motion.


Centripetal Force - The Real Force

http://www.regentsprep.org/Regents/p...if/default.htm



http://www.regentsprep.org/Regents/p...if/centrif.htm

Centrifugal Force - The False Force
An evil word has worked its way into our daily vocabulary, and with it, an incorrect understanding of the way physics works. "Centrifugal Force" ( Latin for "center fleeing") is often used to describe why mud gets spun off a spinning tire, or water gets pushed out of the clothes during the spin dry cycle of your washer. It is also used to describe why we tend to slide to the outer side of a car going around a curve. It is a common explanation...the only problem is all of it is absolutely wrong!!! Centrifugal force does not exist...there is no such thing...it is a ghost we tend to blame odd behavior on.

I don't want to pretend like "hey I've got this" I am just throwing things out to think about. If we want to call centripetal (center seeking) force that which keeps an object in circular motion, say the outside wall of a centrifuge I am fine with that. Now consider as well if you are spinning a rock on a string with your hand, I can feel the centrifugal (center fleeing) force, there is no sensation however of a centripetal force, it is imaginary at best if you like. The string prevents it from flying off and keeps the circular motion but the string is not "center seeking", I would feel any center seeking force, wouldn't I?

I don't know if the last quote was meant to be comical, It says concerning centrifugal force, "we tend to slide to the outer side of a car going around a curve ... there is no such thing...it is a ghost." Is centrifugal force still an imaginary force if the mud that flew off a spinning tire lands in your eye?? I suppose I am not supposed to say it but it strikes me as absolute BS, hopefully that wasn't what the tire was centrifugally spinning off. Again, I may be wrong but if you've spun a rock or whatnot on a string, tell me.

I have other things to work on and don't know when I might actually try and look at this but I have been trying to think of simpler and simpler experiments. So I am with you that without an imaginary, ghost, i.e. can not be apprehended by my hands or other senses center seeking force, a rock on a string would go in a straight motion, but for the string, which I feel fleeing the center, not seeking the center.

So while I don't know what it answers especially regarding these questions, here is the simplest experiment I can think of. Take a marble, shoot it on a half circle track maybe with your finger. The first time at the end of the track have a 1/2 centimeter straight line at the end, the marble should shoot out then in the opposite direction you sent it. Now remove the half centimeter straight line and repeat, the marble should shoot out 180 degrees from the end of the half circle. I want to see that and I suspect that is what will happen. Then repeat the experiment with only a quarter circle. If I am correct, it is odd to think about, the centrifugal force does not require a full circle (i.e. the "imaginary" centrifugal force that pushes you in a car turn), it only requires a force for a time which is not a straight line change but is "centered". Newton was I am not at all being sarcastic such a frickin genius. Of all scientists I know of I consider him the greatest. While I don't fully understand his calculus and it has been some time since I applied it in math exams I realize it describes this. It is a matter of how the object changes in space over time in something that is not a straight line. If an object in motion has a "center" defined by a (not apprehensible to the senses) centripetal force it need not, in specific circumstances, (i.e. flying off the handle) follow the laws of motion which Newton so insightfully gave us for straight line motion. Hows that for a curve ball?!

[ZPDM]

Alright just a few things about Newton then, I am certainly no expert at all on him. He gave us in calculus a way to describe motion of things in space which are not moving in a straight line or are accelerating or decelerating and utilized concepts of infinity and nothingness to derive this. He came up with a way to describe the motion of the heavenly objects and at the same time gave a law to mathematically describe this previously unspoken gravitational force both terrestrially and heavenly. He conceived the laws of motion, entirely accurate if, as would not be often day-to-day encountered in the 17th century, one was not considering spinning objects. As a technician he designed the Newtonian reflecting telescope. He said something entirely fundamental on the nature of light. There is much more, but I would close with a quote from memory of Newton's if accurate. When asked towards the end of his life about his works which were recognized at the time, he said, to paraphrase, "I see myself as a child on the beach who here picked up one stone and here another, while all before me lay the ocean of unexplored truth." Newton would love what Bedini, Bearden and others are exploring.

[guyzzemf]

love this pic

[ZPDM]

Okay I need to return to this question now and I am giving myself a deadline of two weeks to report back either positive, negative or could not evaluate due to engineering issues. I mentioned previously in this thread the "Defense Review" write-up concerning the centrifugal gun system that is, "also recoilless. No recoil. None" http://www.defensereview.com/world-e...of-and-silent/ I also gave the link to the Olympian hammer throwers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpbgg2TRCuw noting that they end their release almost like a ballerina on the tips of their toes. This really makes an impression on me. Not to get too weird but if you look at the last one the Russian female hammer thrower that they give a slow motion video of you can pretty much see that she releases the hammer at a right angle to her current stance. That safety netting is there for a reason, that hammer has tremendous, tremendous force. She ends in balance on the balls of her feet, where the hell is the recoil? She should be somersaulting backwards, she isn't. I've thought about it all I can, there is no reactionary force, yet the released hammer has force.

I will first discuss the implications of all this then detail the set-up that I will try to build.

If there was no reactionary force at the moment of release of the hammer then it had no inertial mass for that instant (perhaps it is even a field effect, that can be looked at), but for some brief period of time there was no inertial mass to the released hammer. This absence of mass may only be in the single dimension in which the centrifugal force releases itself. Don't know how to test that but it is quite obvious that if someone popped up at a right angle to the rotating mass one millimeter prior to release they would be knocked flat on the ground. Yet when released, no recoil.

If there is no inertial mass at the moment of release, then inertial mass is variable! It is dependent upon, as Brian DePalma termed it, "inertial frames of reference". How much mass something has (at least in terms of certain exerted forces) is dependent upon the forces and movements a particle is making in terms of its neighbors at any given time. It is strange but right in front of our face and plain as a hammer, it is also a type relativity certainly worth close examination. Oh yes and before I forget, if inertial mass is variable then what does that say about concerns about the light speed barrier?

From experiments with precessed gyroscopes and experiments of DePalma it is also seen that gravitational mass is likewise variable, don't want to get into that as this is odd enough. Will just speculate that it is my guess that if there is something to all the electrogravitics rumors and T. Townsend Brown then possibly to quite likely it is the same phenomena playing out at the subatomic level.

A last bit of fun then detailing the set-up. If you wanted to really do something with this you would want to accelerate a mass to very high speed, high "specific impulse" is the term I have heard for the what 2500? year old rocket science. A cyclotron would fit the bill, the charged particles after impacting a plate are then directed back in linear Newtonian fashion to "reload". Sort of like a hammer thrower at a bowling alley, or a guy who loops the bowling ball repeatedly before releasing. Now you would want the collision at the impact plate to be very inelastic, (don't want the particle bouncing around want it imparting its force). In such a case the impact plate would heat up a great deal and the engineering challenges would be dealing with the heat and transferring the particles back to reload quickly. So quite oddly, with such an "impulse engine" it would look exactly like countless sci-fi depictions a glowing red hot engine at the back and the craft speeds away. If an F-22 can shoot particles out in a straight line such that it can climb vertically if you could manage the heat and push enough particles fast enough you could generate greater thrust from a cyclotron. The first Star Wars scene where Luke and ObiWan leave the weird bar and have to flee on Han Solo's Millenium Falcon is entirely possibly with our laws of physics (and likely our level of technology) and might just look a bit like that with the whole back of the craft glowing white hot and the thing taking off like a bat out of heck. Just a slight change in thinking required.

From calculations I did in the back of my head trying to get to sleep, if you maintained a constant 1G acceleration for half a voyage then 1G deceleration for the rest (giving you "gravity" the whole trip but the turn around point) it would be about three four hours to the moon 3-4 days to Mars.

This seems now too long a post to detail the experimental set-up, I'll get started and post more after that.

[ZPDM]

Don't know where I left off ranting on this, but while I don't yet have my own experimental evidence I am fairly well convinced there is no reaction force from a ball released from circular motion, i.e DREAD centrifugal weapons system, hammer throwers, etc, etc. I don't want to sell myself entirely short as being terrible with building things as I am not, but it is a funny thing with these engineer types, they are very good at engineering. It is not my forte and so I have been trying to devise the most simple experiment to get to the bottom of this. My first thought was an ironpiece attached to an elecromagnet, spin the electromagnet on a plate, say a CD, short the electromagnet to release the iron piece and have the whole thing sitting on a skateboard, see if the skateboard moves. I could probably build something like that, but even there with the spinning electromagnet and spinning power supply it is a little bit complicated.

So here is what I've come up with and I am almost afraid to do this experiment as it just may work. Let us start first with the most simple straightline motion. Get a skateboard, take a pinball plunger, put in ball and straight track. Pull back plunger release "pinball". As ball shoots foward skateboard should roll backwards per Newton. Even here, you don't want to release the plunger by hand as it will screw up the results. So you need some sort of electronically acivated latch to release the plunger and a magnetically actived reed/hall effect or optically activated diode to "get the ball rolling". I am quite open to advice/suggestions about an electronic latch to release the pinball plunger.

The next part could actually help answer a couple questions, first is there absence of reaction force with release to straight line motion from circular motion and second when does an object figure out it is in circular motion? Does it take one rotation, 1/360th rotation? A couple days ago I watched Eric Dollard's excellent presentation on the history of electricity, wow great lecture, and he touched very briefly on how in Newton's time they were concerned with how to describe an object changing its motion continuosly in time, ie accelerating/decellerating. While I am not a mathmatician, and I may be entirely wrong about this I believe Newton came up with calculus while sitting out in the woods as a young man while plague raged through Europe. So considering the idea of "instantaneous rate of change" lol (there is a Zen contradiction), once centrigfugal motion is established there is a new, as Bruce DePalma might call it, frame of reference, establised for the involved parties.

So to get down to it, what if your next track is a semicircle and you shoot (let it release from a half circle of centrifugal motion) the ball back towards you. The skateboard should now, per Newton, roll forwards right ... right? I'll be honest and I am not being coy, as simple as it is I have not done this experiment yet, I will at some point. It is an insane Kindergarten stupid idea. If anyone on the board wants to engineer this before me, it is simple and a great chance to expose me as a fool. If by chance it works, given the current state of the world, I might name the effect after you! Sorry, don't want to be too silly. I know the textbooks and so say possibly I am a real fool here but that is nothing new. I will get around to looking at this at some point and it would be fun to look at this in a collegial atmosphere, if there happens to be something here it goes all the way back to Euclid. If not, ah well, I still would have mentioned it and as Kramer said to Sienfield when he stopped wearing underwear, "I'm out there Jerry ... and I'm loving it."

P.S. This has to be idiocy as something like this could not be overlooked for thousands of years, still either myself or someone else show me. Even thinking about this I am reminded of the Star Trek episode Return of the Archons, "Landru we obey".

P.P.S. Alright this is really a chance to have me "eat Crow" but I had a bit of a eureka on this. a) The centrifugal force of the ball moving in a circle is not imaginary, if it were an unbalanced rotor would not be unbalanced. So if you take a ball and flip it through a semicircle there is a force out towards the center of the semi circle. If the ball continues to rotate in a full circle there is then a corresponding force from the opposite semicircle in the opposite direction and so an unbalanced rotor wobbles. You can not change the direction of the ball 180 degrees without it having a Newtonian reaction force. If after the first semicircle you release the ball it will cancel in Newtonian fashion the previous Newtonian outward force. That is why there is no reactionary force with release from circular motion.

PPPS The hits just keep coming, very good chance all nonsense, etc etc, but if not, David's slingshot is a standing wave, that is what a standing wave is, you can keep putting more and more power in and while it is constrained (i.e. the rope doesn't break the what is it called Q factor (in this case the air) remains the same) the power in the stone builds.

[ZPDM]

One last thought on this, you would need to rotate the ball through 270 degrees of a circle for it to fly off in the direction opposite your input, at 180 degrees it would fly off perpendicular to the cart, or if you channeled it back (from half circle) to be opposite your input I would guess Newtonian force would be there. So that negates my idea of why centrifugal motion has no opposition force, I guess the best explanation is it just doesn't. Still think the idea that an unbalanced spinning rotor is the mechanical analogy to a standing wave is a pretty good one though. It is quite silly but I think I am going to have to buy some sort of toy track and a pinball plunger and see if I can't build something along these lines this Fall.