I can imagine a pencil rotating about an axis parallel to its length and perpendicular to its length at the same time and I have also seen several self balancing mechanisms online (got no idea wt that is) where a ball spins in multiple directions
So what do they mean by an object can only have one axis of rotation?
In: Physics
Hey, I’ve had the same conceptual problem! I eventually wrote a little program to simulate it.
I’m going to imagine two scenario, both involving a pencil just kind of sitting around in space.
In the first verison, the pencil is just sitting there, and then you give it a bit of a nudge near the end, so it starts rotating around end-over-end. As it rotates around, it make a kind of circle in one spot.
Now do a second version, where the pencil is spinning around the long axis. Now give it the same kind of nudge. You might think that the pencil will make the same kind of circular motion, but be spinning around it’s axis to. But you’d be wrong, that’s not what it does. Instead, it will just kind of wobble.
If you don’t give them extra energy, all things actually always rotate around a single axis. It’s just what they do.
(Unless I’m wrong, of course, but I don’t think I am)
Latest Answers