On Jul 15, 2006, at 02:54 UTC, Bob Delaney wrote:
Are you interested in just rotational motion about the center of
mass, or do you want full translational-rotational motion from the
point of view of an inertial coordinate system?
I don't think translation is important for my purposes; rotation
about the center of mass would suffice.
And I'm very glad you've jumped into this thread, Bob, since I think
you are a lifelong teacher, and I'm certainly a lifelong student.
:) What I'm trying to do is understand why it is that a rotating
object in space has a strong tendency to rotate around the axis with
the greatest moment of inertia -- as happened to the Explorer I
satellite, for example: <http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1332.htm>
I've gotten various hand-wavy explanations of this phenomenon, but I
don't feel I truly understand something until I can simulate it.
Starting with a known working simulation would help separate
problems of understanding from problems of implementation.
Thanks,
- Joe
This looks interesting:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~baraff/sigcourse/notesd1.pdf
Bob
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