Abstract
A rigid body has six degrees of freedom, three of translation and three of rotation. The most general motion of a rigid body can be separated into the translation of a body point and the rotation about an axis through this point (Chasles’ theorem). In the general case the rotation axis will change its orientation too. The meaning of the six degrees of freedom becomes clear once again: The three translational degrees of freedom give the coordinates of the particular body point, two of the rotational degrees of freedom determine the orientation of the rotation axis, and the third one fixes the rotation angle about this axis.
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© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Greiner, W. (2010). Rotation About a Fixed Axis. In: Classical Mechanics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03434-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03434-3_11
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Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-03433-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-03434-3
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