Principle of a gyrocompass using a bicycle wheel on a rotating chair. A bicycle wheel in a fork is mounted on a chair. The fork is free to rotate around its axis which is inclined 45 degrees away from the vertical. As the chair rotates, the center of the wheel moves on a circle. The motion of its axle is observed by an experimenter on the chair, and also by a stationary observer (the movie camera). With the chair at rest, the wheel is started to spin, its angular momentum vector pointing in an arbitrary direction. When the chair is rotated, the axle of the wheel begins to oscillate. The oscillation is damped, and after a few periods, the axle of the wheel (which indicates the direction of its angular momentum) points towards the axis of rotation of the chair. When the chair is made to rotate in the opposite direction, the wheel flips 180 degrees, and after a few periods of oscillation again points towards the axis of the chair.