When we last met NASA science officer Don Pettit, he was demonstrating the behavior of water bubbles in microgravity. Today, Pettit shows us how astronauts can use CD players to MacGyver a gyroscopically stabilized platform for holding flashlights and other tools.
It’s awesome, and it’s part of a series of Saturday morning science videos that Pettit did for NASA in 2003. You can watch more of them online, and read his text-based Space Chronicles newsletter from around the same time period. Good luck getting anything accomplished today.
For more on gyroscopes:
- How Stuff Works: “Gyroscopes can be very perplexing objects because they move in peculiar ways and even seem to defy gravity.”
- Kenyon College: The history of gyroscopes, with examples dating to the 1850s
- Georgia State University’s Hyperphysics site: Gyroscopes explained, in a more visual way