All right, a brief physics lesson since some of you are in need. I thought they taught this freshman year of high school, but maybe not or maybe you're younger than that.
Human beings move by pushing the planet in the opposite direction. You just don't notice because obviously the planet is so big. If it was just you and a rubber ball in space, you could notie that you could only change velocities by pushing the rubber ball. Paladin, dear, the reaction force actually does cancel out the net force. This is actually codified in what we call Newton's third law, which states clearly and explicitly that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the case of a cardboard box, you use friction to tip it. The friction applies a torque to the earth exactly equal and opposite to the torque you apply to the box. If you stick the box on some frictionless surface, or in a vacuum, you won't be able to tip it from the inside.
A vibrating object uses systemns colliding with each other inside the object to produce the effect. You get the vibration because of the time delay between collisions. Foir an example, consider a person inside a box in space. He's up against one wall with a big ball which he bounces off the far wall. When he first throws the ball, the box starts moving in the opposite direction of the ball, keeping total change in momentum zero. When the ball bounces off the far end, the box starts moving in the other direction, still keeping total momentum zero. You get motion in the box, all right, but the only way you can get it to move anywhere is by throwing the ball through the box. Otherwise, the box will just move back and forth over a distance qual to no more than twice its length measured in the direction the ball is thrown. Now, if you stick the box on earth with friction you can play games that will get the box to keep jerking in one direction, but only by pushing the earth in the opposite direction.
At this point, I should perhaps mention that I am a physics major currently studying quantum mechanics. Basic Fourier transforms with no temporal dependence at this point, but I did in fact acquire some small understanding of elementary Newtonian physics from the courses I had to take to get here, so I know what I'm talking about. Paladin, I suggest you reserve your sarcasm for when YOU know what you're talking about or at least have made a token effort to find out.
Now, gyroscopes. When you apply a torque, which is a force on the exterior of a body that causes it to rotate (I'm being real careful now so there can be no misunderstanding) to a gyroscope's axis, you can get an opposing torque (or force, depending on how you want to look at it for the purposes of the original problem) from the gyroscope provided its spinning fast enough. This allows you to set up weird static systems like briefcases floating by one handle. However, this torque is ONLY in response to the exterior torque, and applies exactly so that it produces a force equal to the weight of the object. It depends entirely on where you place your hand. If you apply an electrical force to create a torque inside the gyroscope, the gyroscope will apply an equal and opposite force to whatever you have inside the controller generating the force - probably an electromagnet. The forces will cancel inside the controller and you will never feel them on the outside (unless they become so strong that they rip the controller apart, which might injure your hand as the components fly apart with a total momentum exactly equal to zero, if you count the earth.)
In conclusion: there are no forcefields, and gyroscopes are not magic devices that produce them. It's a nice thought that, like faster-than-light travel, happens to be impossible. Naysayer that I am, I live in reality and do not expect Nintendo to break the laws of physics.
Topic: FORCE FEEDBACK GYROS FOR THE REV--- (Read 19410 times)
