Gyroscopes

As silly as it sounds, as a student of mechanical engineering, I am partial to technologies that make use of mechanical forces. Today they are harder to come by because the solutions to the problems they solved were replaced by electronic components from the mid-20th century on. Today, newer technologies based on quantum physics are beginning to displace electronic devices, at least in specific use cases. In the landscape of electronic technologies, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are among a few honorable exceptions. As the name indicates, these technologies combine both electronic and mechanical components to solve specific problems. And among them, a tool called a gyroscope has been particularly fascinating: both mechanical and MEMS versions coexist today depending on the setting. And even though scientists and engineers are devising newer ways move beyond them to even more advanced forms, they are also finding ways to significantly improve the existing ones. Recently,…