Gyroscope musing

I've been down with the flu pandemic for the better part of week, and thus have had plenty of time for cold-medicine induced musings on the nature of everything. While most of this resulted in predictable self-absorption, one bright light was my memory of a gyroscope I owned as a child.

While sick I lacked both the cognitive function and the dexterity to research this further, but today I am somewhat hale and hearty and thusly dived into Wikipedia to discover the fascinating world of the gyroscope.

Well, it appears I've overrated several things: 1) my current cognitive ability, 2) the benefits of my engineering degree from Texas by god A&M University, and 3) my memory of the greek alphabet. All you common men and women out there, like me, need to consider the gyroscope as a black box that does good things for us, sort of like electricity. Know that the gyroscopic effect is, in effect, a good thing if you are riding a bike, travelling by ship, or, er, launching ICBMs.

I have vague memories of lower-case omega (w to most of us) meaning angular momentum, but absolutely no intuition or perspicacity whatsoever into what this means. I'm not sure if I ever knew, if I forgot after the test, or if my brain has atrophied so much from my lifestyle choices. I'm absolutely sure I never knew the importance of the gimbal. Selah.

For those of you bold enough to seek new horizons in physics, search no further than here.