[Leica] Laithewaite

["Robert Appleby Personal" <rob@robertappleby.com>]

>>>
> Laithwaite first demonstrated that the apparatus was very heavy -- in fact
it
> weighed more than 50 pounds. It took all his strength and both hands to
raise
> the pole with its wheel much above waist level. When he started to rotate
the
> wheel at high speed, however, the apparatus suddenly became so light that
he
> could raise it easily over his head with just one hand and with no obvious
> sign of effort.
>
>>>

I saw this demo myself on Tv around that time. However, what occured to me
immediately and puzzled me about Laithewaite's approach, was that he didn't
_weigh_ his rotor before and after spinning it up. He just did the look mum
I can lift it trick.

If he had weighed it and it had weighed less, that would have been genuinely
astounding. For some reason he never did. Just as he never proposed jumping
out of a fourth storey window with spinning gyroscopes in each hand.

A fifty pound object stabilised by a gyroscope will be easier to lift
because the lever effect is cancelled out by the  gyroscopic stabilisation -
it feels as if you're always lifting it through its centre of gravity
wherever you hold it. This makes it easier to lift, just as a small heavy
object is easier to lift than a large object of the same mass.

Try carrying a ten kilo child snugged into your waist and ten one-litre
bottles of water in a plastic pack by the handle and tell me which you'd
rather do. Do small children exert an anti-gravity effect? (they do of
course - their insistence that we carry them)

I also saw the antigravity machine. Not a convincing demo. It jerked
forwards and backwards and any net forward motion was evidently due to
friction in the wheel bearings. There was also a jumping machine which used
the same jerking motion to achieve its effect - a bit like TM levitators.

The overall impression I got from these demonstrations was that Laithewaite
was, for reasons unknown, completely off his rocker. The objections to his
methods and conclusions were too elementary.

The fact that he then entered into a lengthy correspondence with my father
about gyroscopes, the precession of the equinoxes and the circulation of
blood in horses and man just confirmed this impression.

Rob.