Perhaps someone can visualize the forces ?

[Externet]

When I was a kid, a mechanical engineer explained me a contraption he built. Said it self destroyed in test.

From what I remember, will be difficult to explain with no sketch, but, trying :

 

A horizontal cross, equal lenght arms, being the arms outer ends the shafts of say 4 equal bicycle wheels there.

The cross assembly made to turn very fast on top of a vertical shaft motor,

and the top tangent side of the bicycle tires contact a disc plate above, making the wheels spin.

 

It had something to do with gyroscopic forces... Seemed he was happy with the brutal forces it developed causing its destruction. What could be he was trying to do ?

[Izzy_Bee]

This makes sense to a degree. You need to add more info..

 

Maybe he was just generally testing the force's and momentum of the bicycle I cant be sure as I seem to be readnig your post in a note like form..

[Externet]

Thanks. Am sorry for my poor English, will try to scan a sketch and attach here for clarity. There is no bicycle, there is 'gyroscopes' turning while spinning.

[Izzy_Bee]

try pm me a sketch of something

[Farsight]

...What could be he was trying to do?

Antigravity. A gyroscope doesn't fall over, he was trying to make something that doesn't fall down.

[Externet]

WOW !!

Thanks.

 

An attempt to convert torques to upward forces ?

Do you know of some explanation/theory on the web ? That is weird !

[AlphaSheeppig]

It wouldn't be antigravity as such, because it wouldn't actually move up. It would be more a sort of balance... It would resist rotation. It could be used to keep an object upright on a moving vehicle, I guess. It would need to be very well built because any slight unbalance in its symmetry would lead to fairly high forces if it were to spin very fast. This is probably the problem your mechanical engineer ran in to.

[Externet]

Hi.

Attached, this is a sketch I made about the contraption as was explained to me.

Sorry, unable to rotate ccw ¿? But a viewer can.

 

gyrospin2.pdf

[Farsight]

IMHO it looks something like a "spindizzy" would look like. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindizzy. Years back before I got into physics, I wrote a science fiction story called Spindizzy featuring a flying car with washing machines for wheels. But it's just science fiction. I don't know of any explanation/theory on the web, and I don't know how it could possibly not fall down. Besides, I've got an electric gyroscope, and once it's spinning at full speed it's extremely difficult to rotate it in an orthogonal direction. As far as I know, to make an object not fall down, you need to be able to generate an artificial gravitational field above the object to balance the earth's gravitational field. Then it still takes energy to go up.

[AlphaSheeppig]

By not fall down, I mean if it was balancing on the end of a vertical pole... Not that it would float in mid air. Sorry, I didn't really make that clear....