Now you will find that in every case this box only resists having the axis of revolution of its hidden flywheel turned round, and if you are interested in the matter and make a few observations, you will soon see that every spinning body like the fly-wheel inside this case resists more or less the change of direction of its spinning axis. When the fly-wheels of steam-engines and dynamo machines and other quick speed machines are rotating on board ship, you may be quite sure that they offer a greater resistance to the pitching or rolling or turning of the ship, or any other motion which tends to turn their axes in direction, than when they are not rotating.
Here is a top lying on a plate, and I throw it up into the air; you will observe that its motion is very difficult to follow, and nobody could predict, before it falls, exactly how it will alight on the plate; it may come down peg-end foremost, or hindmost, or sideways. But when I spin it (Fig. 7), and now throw it up into the air, there is no doubt whatever
as to how it will come down. The spinning axis keeps parallel to itself, and I can throw the top up time after time, without disturbing much the spinning motion.
If I pitch up this biscuit, you will observe that I can have no certainty as to how it will come down, but if I give it a spin before it leaves my hand there is no doubt whatever (Fig. 8). Here is a hat. I throw it up, and I cannot be sure as to how it will move, but if I give it a spin, you see that, as
with the top and the biscuit, the axis about which the spinning takes place keeps parallel to itself, and we have perfect certainty as to the hat's alighting on the ground brim downwards (Fig. 9).
I need not again bring before you the very soft hat to which we gave a quasi-rigidity a few minutes ago; but you will remember that my assistant sent that off like a projectile through the air when it was spinning, and that it kept its spinning axis parallel to itself just like this more rigid hat and the biscuit.
