Gyroscopic precession

The current popular explanation for gyroscopic precession is not an explanation at all. It's a series of mathematical manipulations not based on anything. It relies on some silly vector pointing in a direction perpendicular to the circle from the center and the use of the right hand rule of all things. The real answer is far more simple and intuitive.

Imagine a ball attached with a string to some fixed point that orbits that point. By the current definition of circular motion, the ball will have some tangential velocity. Now if you push the ball to the side, the orbit that it traces through the air will change. Since you are applying a force on the ball and therefore an acceleration aka a change in velocity, the ball won't just move to the side a little. It will start moving in a circle at an angle from where you pushed it. The largest divergence from the original orbit will be 90 degrees later. 90 degrees more and the ball will touch the original orbit again and so on and so forth. That's it. There's your explanation for gyroscopic precession.

You might say "But gyroscopes are not a ball on a string, they are a whole, a physical ring. That's not the same thing." To that I say: what is a physical ring but a collection of atoms or molecules bound together? For each individual part of a physical ring or disk, the above ball mechanic will work. The individual parts are not moving relative to each other, so the bonds between them matter only in the fact that they are providing the centripetal acceleration. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if your centripetal acceleration is provided by a string or as the resultant force of chemical bonds. The orbital mechanic still works.

You might then say "But it does matter when you push the physical ring, since you are pushing all parts over the whole orbit at the same time through the chemical bonds. That's not equivalent to a push to a single ball." You're right, it's not the same but if it's at a fixed point, not a plane with resistance, the moment created on all the particles through the chemical bonds sums to a similar effect on the orbit as a whole. I say similar because it might be different in magnitude, I haven't calculated it.

If that doesn't make sense think of it this way: you're applying a force through the chemical bonds on all the particles. This force diminishes nearer the center of the orbit because that's where the fixed point is. That's also where the particles 90 degrees later are. You're trying to rotate the ring, remember? So the change in velocity is larger at the outer edge where you pushed and on the opposite side. And it's much less 90 degrees to the right and left. If you imagine rotating a non-spinning coin, you'll notice that parts near the axis on which it rotates move much less. It's the same thing with the change in velocity. You could say that the particles that are moved more drag the unmoved particles to the new orbit with the energy you provided, through the chemical bonds. They want to go to the rotated orbit and the less moved particles want to stay. They end up somewhere in between but that's in between the new 90-degree-later shifted orbit and the non-shifter orbit. That's still a shift 90 degrees later.

If this ring or disk is connected not only to a point but also to a plane with resistance, the resulting orbit will be more messy. The "plane with resistance" can be another physical object that restricts its freedom to a plane, like a rod going through a bearing. It will be more messy, not because the mechanic I explained above doesn't work but simply because of outside interference. That is, changes to the velocity or acceleration at different angles/positions at the same time.