Originally Posted by
Ascend Charlie
Let's reduce it to a scale you might understand.
You are standing on flat ground, with a bucket of water in your right hand, it is heavy. You start to turn on the spot - you might even get up to 10 RPM. Are you a gyroscope? No? OK, continue.
Let's stop right here actually. Like all rotating matter,
yes, the bucket constitutes a gyroscope.
As you pass a reference point straight ahead, you decide to raise the bucket shoulder high, with a stiff arm. Keep turning. The bucket comes up, but it isn't at its highest point when you are looking at your reference, it is some many degrees afterwards. This is a form of phase lag. The force exerted on the bucket took time to move the bucket upwards, and during that time, you kept turning. Are you a gyroscope? Hmm? Was it precession that made the bucket come up?
Yes, this is gyroscopic precession.
Is it your position that if the weight was very light and I was very strong (like, even near-zero light and near-infinitely strong) I could have instantly shifted the point at which the bucket is traveling? (Not just made it move in a new direction, but actually displaced its line of travel?)