Despite the sophisticated scientific name, all get acquainted with properties of a gyroscope already in the early childhood. It is a remarkable toy a spinning top which, turning and sparkling bright paints, easily rejects easy objects, remaining itself at the same time on the place.
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault
Probably, in the childhood little Léon Foucault as any inquisitive child, with admiration and curiosity monitored rotation of the simplest wooden top. He was interested in property of the disk which is promptly rotating round its pivot-center to keep to constants the provision of an axis of rotation in space. Having matured and having become already famous scientist, the French scientist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault used this ability of the turning disk to prove the fact of daily rotation of Earth. The experiment was made in 1852. L. Foucault the gyroscope gave the designed device with three degrees of freedom the name. In translation from Greek this word means: "to observe rotation".
What is a gyroscope
Gyroscope (zhiroskopy) is called any solid physical body which is quickly rotating round its pivot-center symmetry and, thanks to it, keeping stability of the direction of this axis – gyroscope axes. Examples of a gyroscope are planets of the solar systems, artillery shells and bullets which are started up from rifle barrels, rotors in electrical machines and turbines. These properties of promptly rotating disk in the cardan hinge widely are used today in aviation and sea navigation as the device for definition of parts of the world (gyrocompass) and the stabilizing devices.
From the history of navigation
Ancient seafarers, though were people brave, but made the transitions generally along native coasts, trying not to leave for visibility limits. Swimmings without risk to get lost in the boundless ocean became possible only from the beginning of wide use of a magnetic compass. There was it for Europe in the 10-11th centuries. Claim that Chinese used the magnetized arrow for definition of the sides of the horizon in 3000 years B.C. Emergence by the binnacle ship with the compass card floating in liquid always oriented on the North expanded possibilities of navigation, allowed to make transoceanic transitions. However indications of a magnetic compass demand continuous adjustment and introduction of adjustments for magnetic inducement and deviation.
Gyromagnetic compass (gyrocompass)
The gyromagnetic compass is a device which main mechanism is the gyroscope. With its help define a course of the plane or sea vessel rather true – a geographical meridian. Advantages of a gyrocompass before the magnetic fellow consist that his indications in much smaller degree are influenced by electromagnetic fields the metal surrounding case and moved. Besides the gyrocompass is distinguished by high precision in the conditions of maneuvering.