Angular Momentum
Last week on our physics class we had a
really good time. Who knew physics could be fun? This happen on Friday and it
was an interesting experience. Mr. Popoff, our physics teacher, brought some
items from the Lab Room, which would demonstrate angular momentum. He brought a
spinning pad, or table, but it’s more like a pad; he also brought a bike wheel
with handles on each side, and finally one of my favorite items ever, a
gyroscope. I've always liked the gyroscopes, because they look very fancy and
elegant, but the type of gyroscope Mr. Popoff brought was a scientific one, it
was still cool. For the first item, he presented the spinning pad; he stepped
on to it with two weights on his hands and asked one of us students to spin him
around. The way he spun was simple, at first he was spun with his arms
stretched and as the student let go of him, he coiled his arms and he spun
faster. The reason I think he spun faster when he coiled his arms, is that when
his arms were stretched, the mass was distributed on the edges of the radius
and so he spun slowly because of this. When he spun with his hand on his side,
he spun faster, maybe because all the mass was in the center of the pad. Later he
grabbed the bike wheel; he spun it and then placed it on the rope, and so the wheel
remained on the rope spinning and did not fall for a couple of seconds. Then he
grabbed the gyroscope, reeled a piece of thread in it and then he reeled it out
with speed and the gyroscope spun on a small pedestal and did not fall, later
Mr. Popoff told us to carry it and place it on the piece of thread, we did as
told and incredibly it continue to spin and did not fall for a while. It was
cool. The reason why both the bike and the gyroscope did not fall was because
both conserved their own vertical angular momentum.
