Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Application of Gyroscope on bicycle>>>

1) Bicycle wheel:-
The angular momentum of the turning bicycle wheels makes them act like gyroscopes to help stabilize the bicycle. This gyroscopic action also helps to turn the bicycle.
 Having pointed to the gyroscopic nature of the bicycle wheel, it should be pointed out that experiments indicate that the gyroscopic stability arising from the wheels is not a significant part of the stability of a bicycle. The moments of inertia and the speeds are not large enough. The experiments  indicate that the stability of the bicycle can be described in terms of centrifugal force. A rider who feels an unbalance to the left will turn the handlebars left, producing a segment of a circular path with resulting centrifugal force which pushes the top of the bicycle back toward vertical and a balanced condition.

 2) Turning a Bicycle:-
A bicycle held straight up will tend to go straight. It is tempting to say that it stabilized by the gyroscopic action of the bicycle wheels, but the gyroscopic action is quite small.
       If the rider leans left, a torque will be produced which causes a counterclockwise precession of the bicycle wheel, tending to turn the bicycle to the left

       This is a good visual example of the directions of the angular momenta and torques, but the gyroscopic torques of bicycle wheels are apparently quite small  The gyroscopicly motivated descriptions like "leaning left turns it left" are more appropriate to motorcycles. 

3) Turning left:-
A rider leaning left will produce a torque which will cause the bicycle wheel to precess counterclockwise as seen from above, turning the bicycle left. The angulur momentum of the bicycle wheels is to the left. The torque produced by leaning is to the rear of the bicycle, as may be seen from the right-hand rule. This gives a rearward change in the angular momentum vector, turning the bicycle left.

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