This is confusing because there is a discontinuity at :03, and the wheel changes its direction of rotational spin at this discontinuity. The woman is holding the wheel with the suspended/string end toward her both before and after this discontinuity. Before the discontinuity, the wheel spins clockwise from her perspective. After the discontinuity the wheel is spinning counterclockwise from her perspective. Thus, the rotational direction of the wheel reverse at this discontinuity. I was very confused by what I saw after the discontinuity until I figured out the wheel isn't spinning in the direction that I thought it was spinning, and the reason I thought it was spinning the other direction is because it was spinning in the other direction just prior to the discontinuity. Terribly confusing.
Sorry about that! I just took that clip from another video (linked in the description), and didn't even think to check if the source material had a confusing cut in it.
@@xray4abc913 You seem to have a similar issue with simple punctuation and usage of the English language! Everyone is an expert at something and nobody is an expert at everything.
@@popwatch905 Ha Ha! Very funny! :) Nothing to do with "your hand while it is in precession" ! On a second thought though.....in a funny way...doing the experiment the way I have described it...one has to follow the movement of the bicycle wheel.....and then one could say that the person is ...sort of " precessing"! ;) What has always amazed me...is the ATTITUDE.....like yours! I have been describing my ADDITION to a simple experiment shown many times on youtube! This...addition.......shows a thing NEVER EVER noticed by anyone (at least not to my knowledge!).....and ...then... someone like You ..comes......and observes...nothing.......but the "precession of the hand of the experimenter"....! Obviously....you are a person that...pays attention......but not enough! You missed a tiny little thing only.... the description of a scientific discovery.......not a huge one, it is true, but nevertheless ....still a discovery! So, for the sake of a larger audience....the discovery is the following : The wheel can keep a horizontal position only if it has at least a minimal speed of spinning, OR over ! If we increase this speed to even more than this minimal value... the wheel will tilt upward from the horizontal. ( I did do it, make no mistake!). IF we use from the very beginning a higher speed in the horizontal position, which is the starting position HERE ...the wheel of course will keep it until the rotation slows down enough. If we place the spinning wheel at this tilted upward position...it will precess in it.....and then slowly...as it is losing energy...will get...with its loose end..lower and lower! The experimenters on youtube, at least the ones that I have seen ......limited themselves to the textbook experiment.
@@xray4abc913 the video illustrated the vectors of the forces. Those are the calculations. All you have to do is stick numbers on them. Make up whatever numbers you want. This is a qualitative explanation, which is first principles.
Can you help answer this please. When you spin the wheel forward (clockwise) it turns to the left as seen in the video. Spin it backwards (counterclockwise) and it will spin to the right. Here is where I found an issue. Both right and left handed boomerangs are throw forward in a clockwise direction yet the left handed boomerang flies to the right. Why???
I don't think I've ever commented on a RU-vid video ever, until now. This is by far the best, most intuitive explanation I have ever seen or read for this topic. I'm a physics professor and for years had to just tell students "I know it doesn't make intuitive sense at all, you just have to trust the vector math and the equation: torque = dL/dt" because that's always how I learned/understood it. From now on, I'm going to use this explanation for "how this makes sense", instead. (OK but still also tell them they have to trust the equations/math.)
No one in my A level physics class could understand this...at all. I asked the teacher if we could watch this and for some reason it just clicked with everyone. The satellite analogy really is perfect at showing what's going on. Thanks so much!
Can you help answer this please. When you spin the wheel forward (clockwise) it turns to the left as seen in the video. Spin it backwards (counterclockwise) and it will spin to the right. Here is where I found an issue. Both right and left handed boomerangs are throw forward in a clockwise direction yet the left handed boomerang flies to the right. Why???
🇨🇱 Because Tha main turn of the boomerang us due to aerodynamics, not to gravity. The turn due to gravity and momentum is the "leaning upwards" in the fly, later on... Saludos de 🇨🇱
@@VictorPoulin I'm gonna guess it's aerodynamics/Bernoulli lift due to the different shapes for left/right, but I'll be the left handed one doesn't torque as easily since it works against precession vs addititively (I'm guessing the left handed rang veers to the right and the right veers to the left, due to the lift produced by the shape - ie, which side has the longer path vs shorter straighter path, where the shorter side gets the "lift"). But, since both are rotating "clockwise" or right hand, I'd expect the right handed rang to need less aggressive "lift" from it's shape than the left handed? Have you noticed that the right handed turns more aggressively than an identical but oppositely shaped left handed? Interesting concept. I bet lift is the much strong force on a rang than the precession component of angular momentum from rotational velocity. Anyone with actual knowledge give you any insight on this since you asked (I'm just shootng from the hip late at night insomnia clicking).
@@technobutt2696 I agree that it is lift. You get the same results from a lefty as you would a righty. I agree that precession has little to do with anything going on with the flights. I am friends with many different boomerang builders and most all are learning that precession is what makes the boomerang turn. I am not sure who was the first to tell all of them this but it is now carved in stone for many. Wanted to throw this idea at them about the left handed boomerang but wanted to hear what others thought first. Thank you for your input.
I am a graduate student that serves as an instructor for a university physics lab. One of our labs is on gyroscopic precession, where the students get to play with a heavy disk with handles (like a bike wheel) spinning very quickly. Watching this video with the recent muscle memory of having the disk spin around my wrist is just incredible - as I watch these animations I physically feel the wheel urge my wrist to spin with the precession. Finally linking mental intuition with a physical sensation, a sensation that previously was to me just an invisible force coming from nowhere, leaves me feeling at ease, and physically resolved, as if a persistent dizziness just cleared up. Thank you so much for making this video; I will most definitely share it with my students, and explain it in class like you did from now on.
Albert Einstein Quote: “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” simply and beautifully done.. not hidding behind science and math gargons this is how good scientists do it.. start form the basics form first principals
It was Richard Feynman, and he used a 12-year-old so there was just enough vocabulary and patience available to understand, but not enough to swallow unexplained science jargon.
TheHue's SciTech Dude i have been strugling with this thing for a while and couldnt figure it out and i am not a dumb guy i am pretty familiar with all fields of science and understandes most of the physics videos but not this one and you have made it that much more simple compared to veritasium thank you dude :)
Absolutely! I can do the math all day, but without being able to understand WHY it was happening I couldn't apply any of the knowledge I had. Once I saw the satellite demo in the video and thought of the resulting vector from the force everything instantly clicked.
I've spent DAYS trying to wrap my head around this concept watching video after video and reading everything I could to understand it with no success; that is until your 3 minute video. Now it's so simple to understand! Thank you so much!
@@VictorPoulin Sir, it's because of aerodynamics. When you throw your boomerang with your right hand, the leading edge of your boomerang cuts the wind. Then the top side of your boomerang gets a left push, and the bottom side gets a relative right push. So, it follows a counterclockwise travel path. But when you throw it with your left hand, the trailing edge cuts the wind. So, the top side gets a left push, and the bottom gets a right push, making it travel clockwise.
I spent the whole day watching veritasium,vsauce,etc to trying to understand the concept. Your presentation really helped to understand the concept . Fortunately i played KSP lol
The biggest difficulty was understanding why a moment in one plane would cause motion in another plane. This video really made it easy to visualize the change
A couple years ago I really wanted to wrap my brain around gyroscopic precession, and I watched a bunch of videos about it. Two or three that were quite a bit better than the typical confusing fare combined in my head to give me a good understanding of it. But...I sure as heck wish I had seen this video back then, and FIRST before I watched any others. In 3 minutes you NAILED it. You explained it in the MOST intuitive fashion I've heard yet. EXCELLENT! And thank you!
At the beginning I was like, "what the??" But then I just kept watching the video over and over and drawing diagrams in my notepad and then using my hand as a plane, and then the idea finally clicked! That was AMAZING...this video is a work of art.
Outstanding, this has perplexed me for years. As a helicopter pilot it now makes so many aerodynamic effects experienced in a helicopter more explainable.
I’ve been in aviation for about 4 years now. The concept of Gyroscopic procession applies to the spinning of the prop, as well as conventional vacuum instruments. I have my commercial license and an advanced ground instructor rating, so I’ve listened to explanations on the topic hundreds of times and this is the first time its really made sense. Thank you. Will show this video to my students.
As a motorcyclist, I immediately could apply this explanation to the mystery of why leaning a motorcycle causes it to steer in the direction of the lean. My shifted body weight applies a torque pressing the top of the spinning front wheel in the direction of the lean. The wheel responds by precessing in that direction. It now seems so simple. Thanks!
I've watched so many videos with the bicycle wheel and just couldn't get a hang of it. Your video was so incredibly well done and as you said, intuitive. Thanks so much!!
Great intuitive explanation. I performed this experiment at my son's science fair in grade school a few days ago, but only now do I truly understand why it works - and I've watched many videos on the subject. Thank you so much, you really nailed it!
I was laughing at 2:32 because it finally clicked! This was an amazing video, and was just what I was looking for. I knew someone had to do a better job of explaining it, and you did. Thanks!
I'm one semester away from getting my bachelor's in mechanical engineering and this is the first explanation that made sense to me, even when I'm not in a state to think critically. You made it pretty intuitive to understand and I can definitely see ways to apply this moving forward. Thanks for sharing such a valuable insight!
Your animations are awesome besides the fact that your explanation is exceptional. You clearly took a lot of effort is making this tutorial and people are praising you for it.
Very nice video! My friend Dan has been thinking about this for several years, and immediately understood it after watching this. Needless to say, many nights of sleep has been lost pondering over this problem, but not anymore. Maybe he will show up at school hereon and forth! Thank you.
WOW! ... so happy to find another thinker who chose an intuitive approach to this. I adopted the same 'intuitive' approach to understanding gyroscopic precession 50+ years during my high school physics class. The topic was only skimmed over, but I remember the equations intimidated me. My scenario considered the rim to be comprised of an infinite number of masses forming the disc of the rim but still conceptually independent. When I realized the masses were simply being forced to change their tangential direction by tilting the rim's axis, I was finally able to sleep at night, again. The force (arrows) pushing the balls 'off-course' require an opposite reactive force ... which ends up being the precession.
Great explanation! This is exactly how I started to visualize it when it first clicked for me, but I always struggled to explain that visualization to others. You've shown it perfectly.
I played KSP for some good amount of time to learn about taking spacecraft into orbit and that mechanic you showed there was something that was already familiar to me. I didn't expect that to be the answer to this perplexing physics phenomena for which I didn't have any intuitive explanation until now. Thank you!
This is so much better than all the silly right hand rule, etc., explanations. So many people apply the rules and think they understand the phenomenon. If you can't visualize and explain in words what is happening, you don't understand. Good job. But this is not an intuitive explanation. Intuitive means you can predict an outcome without understanding why. The calculated outcomes are intuitive. This is an analytical explanation.
This was an amazing explanation that finalized my complete understanding of this effect. My amazement started with smarter everyday because of my love of helicopters, to veritasium because I just didn't understand it with smarter everyday, to here. And, although I understood that a torque applied to a rigid body acted 90 degrees out of phase, it was difficult to understand why and your explanation answers that beautifully. Thank you.
Nice, much better than any of those other videos you linked, came from one of them feeling "why did you not explain in detail?" but you sure are able to do that!
Most important video out there,keep up the wok I couldnt understand this phenomena and searched internet documents for weeks but now thanks to you i understand this clearly 👍👍👍
Other people always give the mathematical explanation (one that with angular momentum and torque vector) which is still doesn't explain much. But your video is totally different, thank you man. You are the only one who made me understand this.
Thank you for making this video! I am a physics major and have been struggling to arrive at an intuitive understanding of gyroscopic precession. Other videos I've seen have explained it using physics principles but didn't address what is actually occurring physically. However, this video provides an explanation that is genuinely intuitive.
Thank you so much, so many people have thought they understood the concept enough to make a youtube video, and their only explanation is, “the thumb is pointing that way so it makes sense” without actually understanding any of the physics.
Only freaking video which I understanded it .Nice man that made me stop thinking of it as magical.I have been binge watching and reading about gyroscopes but never understanded it until now
To video maker: u r my type of guy, these formulas never give me satisfaction, I always break them into my head and think on basics, u did here same, cool.
Great and concise explanation! An interesting consequence of this is that applying torque perpendicularly to a vector of angular momentum will result in precession movement perpendicular to both. Also, KSP is truly a great example of how a game can be both entertaining and teach you a lot, at least on the intuition side of things.
Mother of god. I finally get it. Thank you! I needed to understand this in the context of flying an airplane because the propeller is of course a giant gyroscope.
Thank you! First and only explanation I've seen that really explains it. All the others have just rambled about precession vector cross products, but as we know the result vector there is usually a pseudovector and only by dumb luck it in case of precession happens to point to the same direction as the precession torque. So everyone explaining it only via vectors have not understood what really happens in gyroscopic precession.
Brilliant. Exactly the explanation I was looking for. I understand the vector explanation but finally a clear intuitive explanation of precession, which also requires some deep thinking to generalize.
You explain so simple it almost sounds wrong, but now that I think about it, there seem to be no mistakes, so I guess that your explanation is correct, amazing
the moment you mentioned kerbal space program, you got me hooked lmfaoooo this genuinely makes sense thinking about it as an orbit instead of a solid hoop!
Some 8 videos on the explanations behind gyroscopes later and I finally find something that I can come to terms with, haha! Thank you. I can see that this channel isn't still remotely active in its uploads (considering this was the last one upload and that was 6 years ago), but it's still worth noting good work when it's done.
FINALLY understood gyroscopic precession for good, thank you so much!! The moment you said the satellite doesn't just teleport up when a force is applied it all clicked :D
This is such a good explanation. When people explain with vector's it doesn't have any physical meaning. I wanted an explanation using the angular rotations of the system. This was so helpful.
Best explanation. Finally I understood gyroscopic procession after years. I knew that out of plane direction of torque is just symbolic representation of cross product and it's not out of plane in reality.
