Bicycle Wheel Gyroscope

Enlist your more muscular students in using our Bicycle Wheel Gyroscope and they are often convinced they can move muscle where it doesn’t want to go. To their surprise, it will usually muscle them. We start with a large diameter 20" steel bicycle wheel running on ball-bearings. On it we mount a heavy solid rubber tire to guarantee a large moment of inertia. To each end of the axle, we fasten a handle with an eye at the end. One push of the hand provides enough spin to the wheel to display all the properties of a gyroscope. Once spinning, the entire wheel can be suspended by one end of the horizontal axle. Let a student sit on a freely rotating stool and watch them try to move the wheel. Ask a student to hold the spinning wheel and rapidly walk around the corner.