Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/191

Rh is acted on by a force in the direction in which the nose of the body is moving relatively to its center; the direction of this force is thus at right angles, both to the direction in which the center of the body is moving, and also to the axis about which the body is spinning.

For this purpose a cylinder A (Fig. 7) is mounted on bearings so that it can be spun rapidly about a vertical axis; the cylinder is attached to one end of the beam B, which is weighted at the other end, so that when the beam is suspended by a wire it takes up a horizontal position. The beam yields readily to any horizontal force, so that if the cylinder is acted on by such a force, this will be indicated by the motion of the beam. In front of the cylinder there is a pipe D, through which a rotating fan driven by an electric motor sends a blast of air which can be directed against the cylinder. I adjust the beam and the beam carrying the cylinder, so that the blast of air strikes the cylinder symmetrically; in this case, when the cylinder is not rotating the impact against it of the stream of air does not give rise to any motion of the beam. I now spin the cylinder, and you see that when

the blast strikes against it the beam moves off sideways. It goes off one way when the spin is in one direction, and in the opposite way when the direction of spin is reversed. The beam, as you will see, rotates in the same direction as the cylinder, which an inspection of Fig. 8 will show you is just what it would do if the cylinder were acted upon by a force in the direction in which its nose (which, in this case, is the point on the cylinder first struck by the blast) is moving. If I stop the blast, the beam does not move even though I spin the cylinder, nor does it move when the blast is in action if the rotation of the cylinder is stopped; thus both spin of the cylinder and movement of it through the air are required to develop the force on the cylinder.