Momentus

.Prof Laithwaite said that if you had a heavy spinning gyro, supported by a light friction free tower, the system would rotate about the tower and not about the C of G of the tower/gyro system. He demonstrated this. Cambridge undertook to replicate this. Video 5 shows a gyro/tower system rotating about the tower, an outcome predicted by Prof Laithwaite. You all seem quite content with that outcome and you attribute it to the distribution of the mass. All you need is a heavy gyro and a light tower. Which mass distribution would place the C of G and the rotation near to the Gyro. The closer the C of G is to the gyro, the more clearly it would show that Laithwaite was wrong, the object of the exercise. Two conclusions may be drawn. a) The mass distribution was deliberately manipulated, making the result meaningless. There is anomalous behaviour, not acknowledged. Momentus

Perhaps you are being deliberately obtuse, this is just a wind up for you. The relative masses of the gyro and tower do matter. The original experiment consists of a heavy gyro and a light tower. This puts the centre of mass is nearer the gyro. That is the ice tower experiment performed by Professor Laithwaite. Do you see the difference between the Laithwaite experiment and the Cambridge replication? Can you explain why Cambridge would use a light Gyro and claim that it is the same experiment? Indeed what would be the point of doing the experiment with a LIGHT GYRO? Momentus

Google it, The ice tower is on the web. My figures came from Prof Laithwaite himself. Yes , yes , yes. that is indeed what you see, but remember please what it was supposed to do, what the result should have been. In the original demo by Prof Laithwaite the HEAVY Gyroscope rotated about the LIGHTER Tower The experiment by Cambridge University, one of the UK's Prestigious and hallowed institutions was to replicate Prof Laithwaite's experiment and to prove that he was wrong. This experiment shows what happens when Prof Laithwaite's experiment is replicated. You may choose to believe that Cambridge University deliberately altered the parameters of the experiment, they did not. What you see is a heavy gyro, a light tower and a conclusion of political expediency and intellectual cowardice. The question posed by freefall1984 was "Could a gyroscope inertial thruster ever work?" Is it possible? yes will it happen? Not whilst the scientifically literate community allows the establishment to insist that all science is known. There are three experiments on this site which would be advance science. An inertial drive would be but one of the things.

This sums up the general tone of your responses. I know what the centre of mass is, where the mass is considered to be concentrated, a point of balance.This apparatus when the gyro is not spinning should balance at a point "a tenth of the way toward the gyro" indicating that the tower is ten times heavier than the gyro. Ask yourself what's the point of this experiment? What hypothesis was being tested? What was in dispute? It says on the site "In his video Laithwaite places a toy gyroscope on a tower on ice, it is intended that the ice will provide a frictionless surface. It can be seen that precession occurs as before with the gyroscope precessing around the tower". Prof Laitwaites video was remarkable because the gyro was 100 times heavier than the tower and yet the centre of rotation was at the tower. If Prof Laithwaites Hypothesis was wrong then, using a light tower and a heavy gyro, the result in video 5. would be that the centre of mass would be at or near to the gyro, and rotation would be about that point. I will repeat that so that there is no misunderstanding. To prove Lathwaite wrong, the object of the experiment was to show that a light tower precesses around a heavy gyro - And again - like the light moon around the heavy earth, or the earth around the sun etc. What you see in video 5 is what you will see if you do the experiment yourself. The heavy gyro orbiting the light tower. Just as Prof Laithwaite's did. Proving????? A typical gyro as shown in the video weighs around 150 to 200 grams. The tower would therefore have to weigh 1.5 to 2 kilograms to give the results as shown. So using common every day physics with just a dash of common sense, what do you see on a second look? Momentus

http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/gyroscopes/icegyro.html where video 5 clearly shows that the heavy gyro is orbiting around the light tower and is clearly not rotating about the centre of mass. As you did read the page carefully until you understood, it says that an object on an air table will rotate about its centre of mass. Not a surprising conclusion, as any other behaviour would be impossible. there is even a helpful diagram which shows what and where the centre of mass is. The video shows the experiment which should prove this. It does not do so. Red Iron Crown, you may choose to carry on belittling the efforts of those who are trying to understand this new anomaly, or you can examine the video, and share your conclusions. The silent majority will no doubt continue to wander off topic. momentus

There is experimental evidence that Newton's third law of motion is incomplete. You will find it at http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/gyroscopes/icegyro.html where the gyro/tower combination is clearly not rotating about the centre of mass. The Plumb bob pendulum in my previous post circles around a point directly below the point of suspension. It is constrained to move in a circle by the centripetal force exerted by the string. Shortening the length of the string increases the centripetal force and moves the plumb bob into a tighter circle. In order to conserve momentum, the speed of rotation is increased. "Just like a skater". This behaviour is governed by Newton's laws of motion. When the plumb bob is replaced by a spinning gyro, it will circle around a point directly below the point of suspension at an rpm determined by precession. Shortening the string has no effect upon this speed of rotation. The period of rotation of a free pendulum can be calculated precisely its length. It is a defining feature of 'Pendulum'. This is simply not the case for the gyro. Why has no one seen this before? I suspect that no one has looked. After all "everybody knows etc" There is nothing unexpected about the behaviour of either of these pendulums, they behave as is expected. It is only when they are directly compared that the anomalous behaviour is seen. You have proof positive that devices like the M Drive can exist. Mainstream science needs to address the issues raised by K^2. Momentus

An elegant summary. The gyroscope anomaly demonstrates just such an anisotropy (great word that). There is an asymmetry in action which is simple to demonstrate. A plumb bob on a string can be swung around in a circle. It is a simple pendulum. The period of oscillation of a plumb bob is determined solely by the length of the string. A gyro on a string swings around in a circle exactly like a pendulum. However the period of oscillation is determined by precession, which in turn depends upon torque and spin not the length of the pendulum string. When the length of a pendulum is reduced, the period of oscillation is increased, due to the interaction of string tension with the momentum of the mass, and gravity. This interaction does not occur with the gyro. There is either no mass or no gravity or no momentum in the gyro system. Or Newton missed something. The M Drive is the latest in a series of devices exploiting this missing element to move itself outside its own dimensions. If you have a sufficient understanding of dynamics to understand the action of a simple pendulum, then you may apply that to a gyro pendulum and prove to yourself that there is an anomaly. No slip/stick, no racheting, no discrete hands helping things along. Momentus