Hacker News Reader

I see several comments critical of this video. As someone whose only exposure to gyroscopes was the classic string-driven all-metal toy[0] when I was a kid, is this video helpful for getting a better understanding of how modern ones work, or should I just stick to the wikipedia page on gyrometers?

[0]: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/toy-gyroscope-gm172188163-...

View on HN

It does a passable job of presenting the ideas be mind miniature inertial measurement units we find on our phones, but the details are completely wrong, so do not read too much into them.

For instance, decreasing distance increases capacitance (thankfully, imagine the capacitive parasitics Voyager 2 would induce into all of our electronics otherwise... I'm taking a ridiculous example, but the claim is ridiculous too). On the very same diagram, it shows two capacitor values changing, but those would be connected in parallel, so you would get a constant value at the end: the structure as presented is wrong, though it has the correct idea: inertia in a mass-spring system, readout (usually) via capacitance change.

So yeah it works, but if you don't know these devices already, you can't really tell what is accurate. The Wikipedia article is more accurate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com