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Is This Gyroscopic Precession Demonstration Perfect? - Smarter Every Day 312 & Sticker Team Announcement! (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-11 15:01:03
Imported:
2026-06

Content

I have long tried to understand Gyroscopic Precession... and if I'm honest been a bit annoyed by the fact that I can't quite understand the bicycle wheel demonstrations. This simple little expriment in the garage is an attempt to understand gyroscopic precession in a little different way. It's not perfect... but it certainly helps me understand things a bit better without having to do cross products!

Thank you so much for supporting on Patreon! You're the reason I can make the videos I want to make! I hope you enjoy the stickers! If you're a supporting member make sure your address is up to date! The sticker team is for supporting members only.

WeeeEeeeEeeee!

Destin

Files

How I Think About Gyroscopic Precession - Smarter Every Day 312

If you'd like to "Stick With Me"! You can join the Smarter Every Day Sticker Team on Patreon here's: http://www.patreon.com/smartereveryday ⇊ Click below for more links! ⇊ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GET SMARTER SECTION https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tweet Ideas to me at: http://twitter.com/smartereveryday Smarter Every Day on Patreon http://www.patreon.com/smartereveryday Ambiance, audio and musicy things by: Gordon McGladdery https://www.ashellinthepit.com/ http://ashellinthepit.bandcamp.com/ If you feel like this video was worth your time and added value to your life, please SHARE THE VIDEO! If you REALLY liked it, feel free to support on Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/smartereveryday Warm Regards, Destin

Comments

Kurtis Moss

Yes!!! The moment we’ve been waiting for. This is what I say every time I get a Patreon notification!

Samuel Doak

Great stuff I understand better or at least can predict reactions much better.

John lopez

Loved the explanation. My kids loved the simplification and detail of your set ups

Max Goldstein

Thanks for the reminder to update my mailing address.

Seth Proaps

I loved the video and the correlation with linear momentum. One thing I still don't get is why the reaction always starts 90 deg from the point of contact, and not some function dependant on the force or impulse. Like, my intuition would think that a really weak impact would reach it's maximum displacement in less than 90 degrees of rotation.

Steve Jones

I love that you pointed out the difference between knowing WHAT would happen, vs. knowing WHY it happened. I really feel like my refusal to not UNDERSTAND stuff that was being taught to me in school was a limiting factor for me, because I didn't just want to memorize identity equations, and other things we're just expected to memorize in school.. I leave this video with the question then "why is is 90 degrees", and I can suppose that it is because there is a balancing force, or resistance on the opposite side of the center of mass of the spinning object, but then I think in a weightless environment, where you didn't have a wire holding up the object, and yet the force was being applied only to one side of the spinning disk, would the same thing happen or would the whole object move downward and the 90 degree thing is really only relevant in certain test cases? So many scenarios!! Well.. I'll be here as long as it takes to answer them all!! :-) I have all the stickers and show off my baseball regularly!

[REDACTED]

Amazing demonstration! Showing the comparison between the disc and the billiard balls makes a more intuitive understanding!

Timothy T.

Ive had essentially this same mental model for a long time and I'm always excited to share it- but the way I describe it is always still a little cerebral focusing on the implied axes of rotation and linear conservation of momentum- you've done a great job of simplifying it! Id love to see you extend this one more step to show how that precession movement itself actually creates the deflection who's precession counteracts the original force and creates the stabilization effect.

Paul Schellenberg

That was my mental model as well when I want to de-abstract it in my brain. My question now is why does this settle on 90 degrees? I think I can make up some stuff around 90 degrees is the only way the velocity can hit some sort of equilibrium ( sorry for mixing terminologies essentially, two equinoxes and 2 solstices) but in my brain the conditions of this equilibrium only exists if you apply a continuous force on one part of the arc of the gyro. For example, if you applied an instantaneous force on one part of the ring, what’s to say that the minima/maxima (another mixed terminology) of the precession happens at 180 degrees or maybe 120 degrees? I think I know it’s always going to be 90 degrees based on my exploration of orbital mechanics in kerbal space program where at the scale of a solar system, any force you apply is pretty much an instantaneous one but I guess the question is why 90?

Lynn Stillwell2

Thank you for caring for your Patreon supporters! 😊 I'm looking forward to the new stickers! I'm so happy to have them all from the start ... plus the special baseball.

James Smith

I think one should not say that the displacement happens 90 degrees later, but that the maximum displacement happens [approximately] 90 degrees later. There is immediate displacement [vector] in the Y direction where the force is applied it just appears most apparent at 90 degrees.

Team Saunders

Old school smarter every day - in a garage working stuff out and you genuinely feel like you are there with him talking it through. Is this not the internet as we all dreamed it would be??

Mark Wood

Very nice job. I struggled with gyroscopic precession for a long time myself when I was in school. I have a nuclear physics degree and eventually sorted it in a similar manor as you have here. Wobble and gyroscopic precession are interesting. For your next mind melt have a look at Rattlebacks and spinning coins that cover rotation to wobble.

John Hill

Why does the max offset occur at 90 degrees? I’d like to share my thoughts aka guess on why. Action and reaction. At the time the force is applied, there is a reaction 180 degrees on the other side in the opposite direction. These forces are then acting on each other in a sinusoidal motion so the max offset would be at 90 degrees. Maybe someone could mathematically prove or disprove this. What do you think? Great explanation and visuals, thanks!

InspiredSomething

First time supporter here I have followed the channel for 13 years now and had you as one of my home school teacher basically (and you still are to me 😁) I never really felt like I had to give a contribution but since my life has turned around now in a great way (got my first ever official rental property, working towards a clear goal now with a woodworking education so that i can get a stable job that i enjoy, because graphic design or anything with art is a lot harder to be stable at) I felt I just needed to show some gratitude! Also words can really not describe how much help your education has been for me, I've not been able to even finished middle school and I dropped out around sixth grade (mind you the Dutch educational system is a bit different tho) because of me having ASD, Dyslexia and Dyscalculia. So I have had about 5 years of home schooling which you were a great part of and made me truly enjoy learning and discovering new things about literally anything, which may have been the complete opposite if I didn't have you, learning only trough books and exams were the worst motivators to keep trying harder and so I have truly everything to thank you for. 🙏 aaannnddd maybe I've become a member now because the stickers are so awesome and the eclipse photo is a must too xD (which I might do some cool art with the full res 😏) All and all for real tho, the only thing I can ask for in return is that you spark that joy of learning into more people.

Ian Burnside

Destin, after watching this video and having played 1,700 hours of Kerbal Space Program I've just realized that gyroscopic procession works the same way as an inclination change in orbital mechanics. If you burn (apply some impulse or force) normal or anti-normal at an ascending or descending node, the orbit will dip or rise after 90 degrees causing a change in inclination. And an orbit also has angular momentum vector, h, and this vector changes by the same amount of the inclination change. Odd to explain things in terms of orbital mechanics (which is usually seen as more complicated), but when you've played as much KSP as I have you develop an intuition for it. I just never connected the two until now for some reason...

Halcyon_Daze

I've always been confused by the exact 90 offset. The pool balls made that clear to me by making me consider the single point on the rotation and how it has to complete a full cycle before arriving back at the original point. I would suggest changing the rotating points to a flat surface since it's way too easy to apply force in multiple angles where pool balls meet. We just want force in the vertical axis.

SteveW

I ca

SteveW

I can certainly follow your explanation, and I understand why the tilt is shifted by 90 degrees, but why can you spin up a model gyroscope, support one end by a piece of string, and the gyroscope supports itself parallel to the floor?

David Macauley

I wish your last name started with an E. Then we could call you Doctor Destin E.

Andrew Herban

I have watched every video for the last 4 years on both channels. I love your content occasionally it escapes my brain capacity but that's what makes me research it more.

j. guerrero

with that tech at hand, next time, SHOW the non-intuitive Frame Of Reference by sticking one of those tiny GoPro cameras at the center of THE SAUCER/ROD, looking out. then we can see that from the ball/saucer's point of view, nothing weird is happening.

j. guerrero

another cool Frame of Reference perspective would be on the saucer shooting up or down (world around is spinning, but I am motionless).

Brian Montgomery

This may have been mentioned before… But it may help to have an arrow or some indication of which direction the frisbee is spinning…

Jesse Laituri

Destin, this is great! As a professional pilot and flight instructor, I have gotten very comfortable with understanding and explaining the "what" and "how" of gyroscopic precession, but this is the first intuitive explanation I've seen of the "why." All my students will be seeing this video!

Joshua Walters

I’m curious if in a perfect system does gyroscopic precession always occur 90 degree forward of the applied force? If so why wouldn't speed affect where we see the precession?

Dijitek

Really wish Patreon would notify you when a sub drops. Had no idea I wasn’t subbed anymore. Watching this video realized I hadn’t seen anything from Patreon or Destin in a bit. Now I know why. Fixed though back to supporting here.

Chris Herr

I was waiting for the interstellar reference! Thanks for what you do Destin, I feel like I get to go to science class well after I've left school. Thank you from the life long learner in me!

Chris Herr

I believe same example shown here applies, but it requires enough angular momentum to fight gravity. If the disk is vertical the string is essentially pushing down on the disk as Destin did, and my uneducated guess is that with enough energy stored in the spinning disk that force being applied 90 degrees later causes the gyro to spin around the axis of the string instead of fall down.

Christian g. B.

Love it, made patreon because of it... And couldn't enter my address because the algorithm couldn't verify my address in Germany 😭

Luke "Coder" Turner

I have a hunch speed would affect how much deflection, not where. As it is in the linear case, the velocity of the horizontal ball affects the angle and magnitude of the new velocity vector after impact, but not which quadrant the new velocity vector is in. If you project the spinning disk onto a 2D plane such that the disk projects to a vector on the x axis pointing to the origin and apply a impulse (momentary force) along the y axis (a vector along the y axis pointing to the origin), the disk becomes a projection of a vector from the origin pointing out into a quadrant (the tip-to-tail sum of the 2 input vectors from the origin). Reversing that projection back to 3D means the deflection is always 90 degrees ahead

MRudisile

Hey Destin, I love the demonstration and explanation! German EE here so my language is probably a bit wonky but… As I was now thinking about it intuitively I wondered whether the procession wobble that follows after the first 1.5 seconds is not mainly due to friction and non ideal setup, but simply the continuation of the exact same effect. The portion of the disc that has been, say, raised 90° „after“ the initial applied force will have to come back down due to the fact that the center of mass is now misaligned with the point from which the disc is hung. As gravity applies this force, it too will lead to maximal displacement 90° later, thus now the disc will be moving down 180° degree from where you initially applied the upward force and so on… I think your setup is pretty good and this is just the nature of having the disc hung from a fixed point with gravity present. Would you agree? Edit: I guess what I’m trying to say is that you have a superimposed pendulum present that experiences the out of phase movement effect

Travis Boop

Chris Hadfield once described how the ISS stays in orbit much like this.

James Wilshaw

NDQ moment, but did anyone else look at those pool balls spinning around tracing a sine wave and think… “wait AC motors/generators are gyroscopic precession in/of an electromagnetic field?”

Evan Van Heukelom

Question for the group: This video made me excited for the sticker and made me realize I don't believe I have received one since the Exploration Team sticker a few years ago. Are we supposed to do something to receive them?

Serge Kannon

Well, you can simplify the equation in your head by using something that isn't very dense as the wheel. Or imagine something super dense acting upon it. Or do both. For instance, instead of pool balls, use foam balls. Granted, they won't have the same momentum to keep spinning, but imagine a zero gravity environment. Then, as you have the foam balls, imagine whacking one of them from above with a sledgehammer. You'll change the spin from horizontal to vertical. The lowest point will still be at 45° from where you hit it, but on a different axis. On a gyro, The lowest point will always be at 45° but only because it has to return because it's on a spinning disk.

Jesse Clynikal

How about the role gravity and fluid dynamics play in precession? Your spinning pool ball demonstration got me thinking of how the system would react in a nil gravity / low friction environment, I imagined that the ball isn’t “falling” anymore but just infinitely “rising”.

Kate

I've gotten one every year, along with a hand written card, just for being a Patron. Maybe check that your mailing address is up to date?

A.A.M.I.T.Y.

Im here to watch it twice (from your Mad Scientist Lab ["garage"]... to make sure I get smarter.

Scott & Heidi Napier

Love the video. All your videos. 8 can't seem to find where to check/update my address. Any help appreciated

Luther Lewis

I'm upset because I've been supporting you for years and I just realized that my patron address was my old address from 10 years ago. So, I've never got my stickers. Just updated my address but I'm sad, very sad about not getting my stickers.

Hugh Gautier

At 80 years young I enjoy seeing and doing when I can things that I have not tried before. Your explanation with that disk showed what I saw happen over 60 years ago, and no one explained it as susinctly you did. My BA was in Theology but the Masters was in a totally different field Industrial Computers, Robotics, and Electronics Engineering gotten in 1996. I've worked inside some of the US NAVY's mainframe computer systems at a base that would seem like paradise, but you couldn't go anywhere in the country that it is located in when. I'll give you a rough idea of the location 545 miles SSE of Miami, Florida. This was my first duty station aboard the USNS Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They had a CDC-8090 mainframe computer that used paper tape. The system was tha size of a small room, had heavy duty spring mounted under its feet and the room was kept at 60 degrees year round. The machine ran on tubes that went out at odd times of the day and night. You go into the core area with the system on so you could see which tubes had blown and then mark them on your chart and turn the system off to replace them, I didn't want to be a fried technician changing a tube with it running. We tested ships going to VietNam while I was there.

smartereveryday

Hi Luther! Email us at patrons@smartereveryday.com and we will take a look and get you squared away! - Alyson

smartereveryday

Hi Evan! Email us at patrons@smartereveryday.com and we will take a look and get you squared away! - Alyson

Paul Black

You might put a black spot on the ring to make it more clear that the "saucer" is spinning.

Brad Keener

I'm just happy to see Destin is a red tool guy, not one of those other colored tools.

Jacob Gentry

My thoughts exactly! Would love a second video or explanation of why it is always ~90 degrees if it is always ~90 degrees.

Ken Petre

This subject is why I happened upon your YouTube about 10 years ago. The helicopter videos did not explain my questions but this does perfectly. I sent an email asking about it last year when I joined your Patreon. I hope that was a part of the catalyst of your video. If not that is ok. Thanks again for the awesome video!

Jacob Shelhamer

This Gyroscopic Precession Demo is great at creating a visual way to understand, at a very simple level, what principles are taking place when external forces are introduced. You got a patreon subscriber from me b/c of this video. It is the first explanation that actively attempts to make it easy for those without engineering backgrounds to understand. Proud to support your work and energy to share knowledge openly with everyone.

Gene Wedge

Riding a motorcycle, I realized that if I just give the handlebar a shove to the right, then the bike tilts left. I thought about that little bit of tire at the back of the front wheel, moving upward. That bit is getting pushed to the left, so as it moves toward the top it will be gaining momentum to left, hence tilting the bike to the left. I thought that made the effect pretty clear 😀 Great show, Destin!

Gene Wedge

I'd sure like to see the effect with the disk suspended to wobble about its CG. I notice your current setup has the mount at the top of the hook, leading to a secondary torque when the disk is tilted. This would explain the additional precession you're seeing. Thanks to MRudisile for noticing this.

Jeff Steiner

Destin, as a fellow pilot and aviation buff, I thought of your video here when I saw the latest update from Juan Browne "blancolirio" about the UPS MD-11 crash in Louisville in November. If you didn't catch it, the #1 (left) engine came off completely, went clear over the plane, and landed on the RIGHT side of the runway. According to his latest update, from yesterday (1/15 - https://youtu.be/q5OQzpilyag?si=G7c9zvzPmUa_VH4c), it's appearing that the aft pylon mount fractured, and that's what led to the disastrous separation of the engine from the airframe. In his fifth video about it, Juan talked about the stress of gyroscopic precession on the engine mounts precisely at the moment of rotation, which I found amazing. He demonstrated with a bicycle wheel how the rotational force is applied to the airframe as the airplane rotates, and it turns out that is exactly what seems to have happened. You can check out that out at the link below, queued up to the 06:15 point where he talks about it. https://youtu.be/LYIKD_lfG74?si=S9Jbp6-_gRd8ezZb&t=375 (I don't think links are clickable here on Patreon, so you gotta highlight it, then right click and choose "Go to...") Oh, and I hereby declare that "WeeeEeeeEeeee!" is to be our SED shibboleth! WeeeEeeeEeeee! Jeff

Secret Tunnel

I love the video and the stickers sold me on finally joining patreon. Also I finally truly understand what causes my disc golf disc to turn... will it help me play better? We will find out!

Ethan

Destin, long long time lurker from the OG youtube days… the smarter scrubber and local American based knowledge and manufacturing sold me on buying; your scrubber, your buddies grill accessories, and subscribing here for the stickers!! Keep doing you independently.!!!!!

Detroit Designosaur

The best thing about your videos is how excited you are. It's not over the top, but rather just enough to show how much you love it and it's something I think about every time I watch them. I would gladly watch your videos even if I wasn't interested in the topic because of how genuinely happy you are to learn about things and figure stuff out. It helps that you do pick interesting things to talk about and think of creative ways to explain them, but that joy in curiosity and sharing what you've learned is what has me hooked. 🤓🥰

Anthony Blacker

The reason I joined your Patreon is EXACTLY the statement you made about earning your Masters then going outside and looking at a helicopter and realizing you don't actually understand WHY it's doing what it's doing, and this.. THIS is who I am. I NEED to understand the actual reason things do the things they do as a law. I am SO intrigued by all the little things we mostly take for granted.. and I have been watching you for so many years and I am ashamed that I can't afford to pay more, but I am so SO grateful you have shared your time and knowledge with us.. truly thankful for your hard work. Thank you Destin.

Rando Boomer

Thanks for the education. Joined today. Will all types of stickers be sent or only one? If only one, which one? Is it based on membership level?

Anthony Blacker

I just received my baseball today Destin, and it is AMAZING of you to share things like this. At first I thought it was this year's sticker pack (My 4 year old daughter who LOVES watching most of your videos with me) handed me the package and I though, oh.. no this is not stickers! Don't you worry, I will stay a Patron for as long as you are creating, and even if you don't put out a video for a while, I know for sure you are working hard in the background on SO many thought provoking projects just like this one here.. Thank you Destin, to your family and friends and to all the Patrons who help support you and the GREAT things you're doing with engineering!!

Malcom Mal Reynolds

I also just received my baseball; thank you, Destin! Thank you for giving us the opportunity to be part of Smarter Every Day and contributing to learning! Also, I mentioned this a couple of months ago: creating a Smarter Every Day series…on the ISS…while you are ON the ISS. NASA knows you. We would totally support you going into space.

D B

Just joined today. The above video does help one to visualize what is happening, but I still have questions WRT to how this directly applies to mechanical workings of helicopters, and exactly how the force applied translates to an angle further down the line, I assume it can not go past 179.99x degrees past the point of where the force was applied. Right? Thanks, Dan B

Katey

Really enjoyed the curling video.👍🏼

Rosuav

"and we'll blow up this time". When did this channel switch to Kerbal Space Program content? :)