45

1.16
Bicycle Wheel Gyroscope

A bicycle wheel attached to a wire with a
fishing line swivel and suspended from a
support makes an impressive gyroscope.

MATERIALS
bicycle wheel gyroscope
1

stainless steel wire
fishing line swivel
rotating stool or platform
2
or swivel
chair (optional)
hand-held barbells (optional)
suitcase with internal gyroscope (optional)

PROCEDURE
Take out a bicycle wheel and ask who has one of these at home. All the children will
immediately recognize it and will wave their hands. Point out that it is a bicycle wheel,
but it is a special one because it contains concrete. Spin the bicycle wheel up to high
speed by hand or with a rope, and suspend it from the ceiling by a wire with a fishing line
swivel attached to one end of its axle [13]. The concrete gives the wheel more angular
momentum and makes the demonstration more dramatic. The fishing line swivel allows it
to precess.
As the gyroscope precesses, you can make its axis bob up and down in a motion
known as nutation. If a bicycle wheel gyroscope is not available, you can show the same
effects on a smaller scale with a toy gyroscope or even a toy top [4].
Ask a strong volunteer from the audience to hold the spinning bicycle wheel by one
end of its axle horizontally at arms length and then raise it vertically over his head, first
with the wheel not spinning and then with it rotating rapidly. It is very difficult to do this
without a bit of practice. Mount a spinning gyroscope inside a suitcase to provide a

1
Available from American 3B Scientific, Arbor Scientific, Carolina Biological Supply Company, Fisher
Science Education, Frey Scientific, Klinger Educational Products, PASCO Scientific, Sargent-Welch, and
Science First
2
Available from American 3B Scientific, Arbor Scientific, Carolina Biological Supply Company, Fisher
Science Education, Frey Scientific, PASCO Scientific, Sargent-Welch, and Science First
46 1.16 Bicycle Wheel Gyroscope
particularly spectacular and unforgettable
demonstration to the person who tries to
turn abruptly while carrying the suitcase.
Hold the bicycle wheel in your hands
while sitting on a rotating stool or swivel
chair or while standing on a rotating
platform [57] to illustrate Newtons third
law of motion (action and reaction) and the
conservation of angular momentum. You
can make the stool rotate one direction or
the other by turning the axis of the bicycle
wheel in different directions. While
standing on the stool, hand the wheel to
someone standing on the floor who inverts
it and hands it back to you. You then invert
it again, and hand it back to the person on
the floor who inverts it again and so forth
until the stool spins quite rapidly. The
bicycle wheel is imparting quanta of
angular momentum to you. Merry-go-
round music works well here.
The rotating platform can serve to
demonstrate the conservation of angular
momentum using a pair of hand-held
barbells [8]. Start with the barbells at arms
length and have someone give you a gentle
spin. Then pull the barbells in toward your
body to make yourself spin faster. You can
slow down again by extending your arms.
This effect is familiar to anyone who has
observed a figure skater doing spins on the ice. As the moment of inertia changes, the
angular velocity must also change so as to keep their product (the angular momentum)
constant. You can also demonstrate the coriolis force by showing that as you relax your
arms and let them fall toward your body while rotating on the platform, one arm goes
forward and the other backwards [9].
The gyroscope has many interesting properties. You can show that its axis will
remain horizontal so long you allow it to precess. When you stop the precession, it falls.
You must apply the force required to make it move in a particular direction at right angles
to that direction. When swung like a pendulum, the wheel tends to remain in a plane. This
is the principle of inertial guidance of rockets, the gyrocompass, and other navigational
instruments [10]. It is also the reason a spinning football is more stable and easier to
catch.
You can point out that the gyroscopic action of the wheels is one reason a bicycle
remains upright. In that case there is no precession since the wheel is suspended from its
center of gravity. You can roll the bicycle wheel across the floor to illustrate that it stays
1.16 Bicycle Wheel Gyroscope 47
upright much longer than it would if
released from rest. The static and dynamic
stability of bicycles makes an interesting
digression [1115].
You can build a larger version of the
gyroscope using a water-filled automobile
tire and other inexpensive parts easily
obtained from junkyards [16].

DISCUSSION
The gyroscope provides an interesting
and unusual example of the conservation
of angular momentum. The angular
momentum is a vector pointing along the
axis about which the gyroscope spins (in a
sense given by the right-hand rule). In the absence of external torques, the direction as
well as the magnitude of this vector will remain constant. Friction produces a torque that
decreases the magnitude of the vector and eventually causes the gyroscope to stop
spinning. Gravity produces a torque perpendicular to both the axis of the gyroscope and
the vertical, and thus causes the horizontal precession. On a less abstract level, you can
explain the precession in terms of the downward pull of gravity that tries to make the
wheel rotate faster at the bottom than at the top. Since the wheel is rigid, this can happen
only if the wheel moves horizontally in the direction in which the bottom of the wheel is
spinning. The Earth is a large gyroscope that precesses once every 26 000 years due to
the gravitational torque exerted by the Sun on the slight bulge at the equator. This
precession may be at least partially responsible for the onset of the Ice Ages.
Note that the frequency of precession is inversely proportional to the frequency at
which the gyroscope is spinning. You can illustrate this fact by observing carefully the
precession as the gyroscope slows down. Furthermore, the precession frequency is
independent of the angle that the axis makes with the horizontal. The torque is greatest
when the axis is horizontal, but so also is the distance it has to move to precess once
around, and the effects just cancel.
The kinetic energy associated with the precession has to come from somewhere. It
comes from the gravitational potential energy of the gyroscope itself. When you release
the gyroscope from an initial fixed horizontal position, it starts to fall in the usual
manner. This falling motion rapidly transforms into precession, with the center of mass
slightly lower than it was initially. As it falls, it overshoots its equilibrium position
slightly and oscillates up and down about this equilibrium, resulting in nutation. The
nutation usually damps out rather quickly, but you can excite it by a rapid upward or
downward impulsive force on the free end of the axle of the gyroscope. Friction retards
the precession, and the center of mass gradually falls until eventually the wheel hangs
straight down.

48 1.16 Bicycle Wheel Gyroscope
HAZARDS
A spinning bicycle wheel is unwieldy and hard to control because of the unique
properties of the gyroscope. You can stop the rotation by touching the wheel against
something (shirt not recommended!). Be careful not the let the wheel graze your chest.
Dizziness can onset very quickly on the rotating stool or platform. It can induce sickness
and cause you to fall after getting off the stool. Pause for a moment to regain your
equilibrium before stepping off the stool. Be careful not to catch your fingers in the
spokes of the wheel. If you use a volunteer on the rotating platform, locate the platform
far from any objects that could cause injury if the person falls, and stand nearby to assist
if the volunteer loses his or her balance.

REFERENCES
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(1974).
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Company: New York (1970).
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