Eric Laithwaite's paper "The Jabberwock" "The Jabberwock" posed the illustrated question. He felt the gyro should tilt down lowering the centre of gravity of the whole system without changing the axis if spin. It has in effect 2 pivots A & B and A prevents torque being transferred to B. But it didn't fall and he could find no ordinary explanation for it. Can anyone please explain why the precessing gyro does not overbalance.
The drawing gives a wrong presentation of the setup that is described in the article.
Now let us stop the wheel and push the gyro stand until it overhangs the bench-as shown in Fig. 4.9-and is on the point of toppling.
The drawing suggests a situation where the center of mass is beyond the edge of the table. However, what is intended is that the center of gravity is supported by the table. It's close to edge of the table; it's close to toppling, but there is still margin.
There is a 2012 answer by me in which I discuss gyroscopic precession
Note: in the presentation in that answer the concept of angular momentum vector is not used. Instead the presentation capitalizes on symmetries of the case.
(I don't use the concept of angular momentum vector there because it has a disadvantage. The angular momentum vector is a highly abstract concept. It is of course perfectly suitable for computations, but it doesn't lend itself to transparent understanding.)
