I made a couple of videos to help introduce and explain the incredibly counter-intuitive concept of Gyroscopic Motion to students in a 3rd year Mechanical Engineering unit that I am a Teaching Assistant for at UWA. A small part of the explanation is in the context of the material provided in the unit, however all of the information that you need to form a basic understanding is present. Hopefully this can help others get their head around this crazy concept, I know it took me a little while to understand it when I first encountered it.

The maths is actually really simple with a basic high school understanding of vectors. So just keep that in mind. Don’t try and understand WHY it moves like it does, it is way too counter-intuitive for that and you will just get confused. Rather, try to understand WHY the MATHS says that it moves like it does. Then you can confirm that the maths agrees with reality.

Introduction to Gyroscopic Motion #1

This is a basic introduction to Gryoscopic Motion by looking at the motion of a top spinning with constant angular velocity, at an angle from horizontal.

Introduction to Gyroscopic Motion #2

A more in depth look at Gryoscopic motion. Euler’s equations for rotational motion, their derivation and simplifications that can be made; along with how they can be applied to the spinning top problem.

–Chris