From: "robert werner" <cryocycle_at_hotmail.com> > My daughter and I are thinking of doing a science fair project on gyroscopic > stabalization of kayaks. We are building small models for this and testing > them in a wave tank. Has anyone ever done this before or have any ideas if > it would work? Sounds interesting! Ever notice that a top, if it isn't spinning perfectly vertically, starts to rotate in a circle about its point? This motion, called precession, is due to conservation of momentum. The same thing will happen to a gyro-stabilized kayak. Imagine this scenario. You are sitting in the kayak, gyro spun up and in perfectly calm water. A boat crosses your bow at a distance, creating a wake. The first wave strikes your bow and the kayak pitches up. You have created the same situation as a spinning top. The kayak will precess. The result will be that the kayak will heel over. If the gyro is spinning clockwise as seen from above, the kayak will roll to port (I think that's correct, having done the vector analysis with my hands here - the physics equivalent of counting on one's fingers :-) (Wait, I have a gyroscope here... hmmm can't get enough force to feel it, ok - it remains an execise for you). This assumes a single gyro wheel. If you want to counteract this, you can add another wheel that will stabilize it against this rolling, say by mounting a wheel on an axis that runs athwartships. With two gyros, you'll still get precessional effects (yaw). Add a third, mutually perpendicular wheel and you get the equivalent of an inertial guidance system in which the precession of each wheel is countered by another wheel. The trick is to create three wheels that will fit into the kayak with sufficient angular inertia to have an effect and not make the kayak too heavy. I would say that if you could show the precession problem with one wheel (pitch causes roll) and explain it, this would be a reasonable project. Showing that three wheels solves this (and demonstrating it is or is not feasible) would be a super project. Just figuring out how big a gyroscope is needed for a kayak is pretty fancy stuff for high school! Mike (Who spent a year teaching high school physics while in grad school) *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Jan 31 2002 - 21:56:21 PST
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