Can/would/does a gyroscope have the potential to be a power source?

[Noggie]

i am not a physicist or electronics engineer by any way, means or form. just looking for information on a project that i am currently working on. thank you.

My thinking is that a gyroscope can act on similar lines to kinetics, in that the movements would make a small charge to go to a battery power source, to keep it charged. that in the way the U.S army is using kinetics, rather than lugging massive batteries around.
any replies in laymen's terms please.
Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[ronsimpson]

If you had a gyroscope and spun it with a motor very fast it will store energy. The gyroscope will need to be in a vacuum to keep turning for a long time. The gyroscope can turn a generator to get energy back.
You will lose some energy in the motor, in the generator and some when the gyroscope from bearing and friction loss.

Off the top of my head I can't remember a formula for energy stored this way but it is directly related to RPM * mass * diameter.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

i am not a physicist or electronics engineer by any way, means or form. just looking for information on a project that i am currently working on. thank you.

My thinking is that a gyroscope can act on similar lines to kinetics, in that the movements would make a small charge to go to a battery power source, to keep it charged. that in the way the U.S army is using kinetics, rather than lugging massive batteries around.
any replies in laymen's terms please.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Simply - NO

As ron as suggested you can use a big flywheel to store energy (there are buses that do just that), but it's not an energy source only a way of temporarily storing it.

 

[Noggie]

Ok. The thinking on my part is that, for instance, it acted like a kinetic solenoid. A ring would be coppered to make a small charge to transfer to a power source. A charge from gyroscope to the battery, rather than battery to gyroscope. No motors or vacuums. Just kinetic energy from the movement. Like the kinetic watch. If i were to shake it, for a couple of hours, could it make a milliamp charge to store in a battery? As it would be connected to the battery. Does that make any sense? It does in my head, but confuses me on text. Lol. Thanks again.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

If i were to shake it, for a couple of hours, could it make a milliamp charge to store in a battery?

How would shaking a gyroscope make it spin?.

If you want to shake something, simply place a magnet in a tube and wind a coil round it - as in the countless commercial examples.

 

[Noggie]

Shaking was an example, to generate movement. If it was in a vacuum container (less resistance, as suggested in the previous post) and you strapped it to your leg for when you walked, would that work? It may sound like a dumb ass question, but if you could just humour me. Obviously i do not have the expertise in this field, and the very reason for posting this question to a forum of experts.
The gyroscope is for all movement and not just up/down, left/right, in a specific direction. To cover all bases of movement direction. is that a better description? Thanks for your time replying all.

 

[dougy83]

A gyroscope won't do much when you rotate or shake it, unless it's already spinning. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscopic_exercise_tool

Kinetic watches use a rotating weight to generate energy - to be stored in a spring, or a capacitor/battery. This weight is offset (unbalanced) from its rotation axis so that movement of the device will cause the weight to move. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_quartz

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Shaking was an example, to generate movement. If it was in a vacuum container (less resistance, as suggested in the previous post) and you strapped it to your leg for when you walked, would that work? It may sound like a dumb ass question, but if you could just humour me.

No, again obviously not - for a gyroscope to work you would have to spin the inner part - why not buy a gyroscope and play with it?.

 

[ronsimpson]

Nothing is free. You can't really get energy for nothing.

In the watch story; you have to shake the watch (or at least move it ) to generate the energy to wind the watch. The process of shaking the watch to wind it is probably 1% efficient. If you only had to shake the offset wheel not the whole watch then you might be 5% efficient.

The effort to move your arm (your whole body when you walk) is very large compared to the small amount of power stored. That is why it feels like the energy is free.

 

[profbuxton]

An interesting idea, but no it would not work as a power source, even if spun up as you took power from it it would slow down. And using it for your suggestion(military backpack etc) would have some hilarious results. There are tales of aircraft techs removing even small gyros from aircraft with out stopping them spinning at the usual high speed,carrying them and trying to change direction and finding themselves tipped over by the precessional force. You would have soldiers falling all over the place if they changed direction while marching with these things.