As an illustration of this, consider the spinning projectile of Fig. 10. The spin tends to keep its axis always in the same direction. But there is a defect in the arrangement, which you are now in a
position to understand. You see that at A the air must be pressing upon the undersurface A A, and I have to explain that this pressure tends to make the projectile turn itself broadside on to the air. A boat in a current not allowed to move as a whole, but tied at its middle, sets itself broadside on to the current. Observe this disc of cardboard which I drop through the air edgewise, and note how quickly it sets itself broadside on and falls more slowly; and some of you may have thrown over into the water at Aden small pieces of silver for the diving boys, and you are aware that if it were not for this slow falling of the coins with a wobbling motion broadside on, it would be nearly impossible for any diving boy to get possession of them. Now all this is a parenthesis. The
pressure of the air tends to make the projectile turn broadside on, but as the projectile is spinning it does not tilt up, no more than this gyrostat does when I try to tilt it up, it really tilts out of the plane of the diagram, out of the plane of its flight; and only that artillerymen know exactly what it will do, this kind of windage of the projectile would give them great trouble.
You will notice that an experienced child when it wants to change the direction of a hoop, just exerts a tilting pressure with its hoop-stick. A man on a bicycle changes his direction by leaning over so as to be out of balance. It is well to remind you, however, that the motion of a bicycle and its rider is not all rotational, so that it is not altogether the analogue of a top or gyrostat. The explanation of the swerving from a straight path when the rider tilts his body, ultimately comes to the same simple principle, Newton's second law of motion, but it is arrived at more readily. It is for the same reason—put briefly, the exercise of a centripetal force—that when one is riding he can materially assist his horse to turn a corner quickly, if he does not mind appearances, by inclining his body towards the side to which he wants to turn; and the more slowly the horse is going the greater is the tendency to turn for a given amount of tilting of one's body. Circus-riders, when galloping in a circle, assist their horses greatly by the position of their bodies; it is
not to save themselves from falling by centrifugal force that they take a position on a horse's back which no riding-master would allow his pupil to imitate; and the respectable riders of this country would not scorn to help their horses in this way to quick turning movements, if they had to chase and collect cattle like American cowboys.
Very good illustrations of change of direction are obtained in playing bowls. You know that a bowl, if it had no bias, that is, if it had no little weight inside it tending to tilt it, would roll along the level bowling-green in a straight path, its speed getting less and less till it stopped. As a matter of fact, however, you know that at the beginning, when it is moving fast, its path is pretty straight, but because it always has bias the path is never quite straight, and it bends more and more rapidly as the speed diminishes. In all our examples the slower the spin the quicker is the precession produced by given tilting forces.
Now close observation will give you a simple rule about the behaviour of a gyrostat. As a matter of fact, all that has been incomprehensible or curious disappears at once, if instead of speaking of this gyrostat as moving up or down, or to the right or left, I speak of its motions about its various axes. It offers no resistance to mere motion of translation. But when I spoke of its moving
horizontally, I ought to have said that it moved about the vertical axis A B (Fig. 13). Again, what I referred to as up and down motion of F is really motion in a vertical plane about the horizontal axis C D. In future, when I speak of trying to give motion to F, think only of the axis about which I try to turn it, and then a little observation will clear the ground.
