Sit in a swivel chair and see which way it pushes you back. Get it going fast, and then start to rotate it side to side.Oh there is just so much to do with a spinning bike wheel gyroscope! She is living the dream of angular momentum. She is hopping over people playfully as she goes. No, she is sideways, walking along the walls with her head toward the middle of the rotating ride. The ride operator isn't in the middle both. The teenagers are holding hands, the brothers are playfully 'punching' each other by putting their fists in front of the other's face and letting them go limp. People find themselves 'glued' to the wall, their limbs barely able to be lifted toward the center of the ride. The Gravitron at the carnival starts up, spinning faster and faster. URBAN LEGEND SIDENOTE: The urban legend goes like this. Hose Clamp x 2 (from hardware store, big enough to fit around dowels).Thick Dowel (I used 2' diameter and worked great.Bike Wheel (from dump, thrift stores, old bikes, anywhere!).Concepts: angular momentum, gyroscopic effects, centripetal force, torque.Basically just wood, clamps, and a wheel. I wanted to make one for my classroom with extremely basic supplies for any bike wheel available. Since a lot of the gyroscopes require harder to acquire materials than just a bike wheel, companies have made things like these demo tools for sale. These can all demonstrate physics phenomena like gyroscopic procession and conservation of angular momentum. Also this one from Veritasium or this one from the Exploratorium.

They keep spinning things in check.īrilliantly, there have been great science demonstrations using a bike wheel like this one at MIT. Why is it so much harder to stay up on a stationary bicycle? Why don't Segway tours always fall flat on their faces? How do smartypantsphones know when they're face up? The answers are wheely similar, and all lie in the realm of angular momentum and gyroscopes.

Gyroscope ride