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The moment of inertia depends on how mass is distributed around an axis of rotation, and will vary depending on the chosen axis. For a point-like mass, the moment of inertia about some axis is given by , where is the distance of the point from the axis, and is the mass. For an extended rigid body, the moment of inertia is just the sum of all ...
The moments of inertia of a mass have units of dimension ML 2 ([mass] × [length] 2). It should not be confused with the second moment of area, which has units of dimension L 4 ([length] 4) and is used in beam calculations. The mass moment of inertia is often also known as the rotational inertia or sometimes as the angular mass.
For example, a free body diagram of a block sitting upon an inclined plane can illustrate the combination of gravitational force, "normal" force, friction, and string tension. [note 4] Newton's second law is sometimes presented as a definition of force, i.e., a force is that which exists when an inertial observer sees a body accelerating.
Classical mechanics is the branch of physics used to describe the motion of macroscopic objects. [1] It is the most familiar of the theories of physics. The concepts it covers, such as mass, acceleration, and force, are commonly used and known. [2]
Jean d'Alembert (1717–1783). D'Alembert's principle, also known as the Lagrange–d'Alembert principle, is a statement of the fundamental classical laws of motion. It is named after its discoverer, the French physicist and mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and Italian-French mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange.
Euler's second law states that the rate of change of angular momentum L about a point that is fixed in an inertial reference frame (often the center of mass of the body), is equal to the sum of the external moments of force acting on that body M about that point: [1] [4] [5]
An example is the calculation of the rotational kinetic energy of the Earth. As the Earth has a sidereal rotation period of 23.93 hours, it has an angular velocity of 7.29 × 10 −5 rad·s −1. [2] The Earth has a moment of inertia, I = 8.04 × 10 37 kg·m 2. [3] Therefore, it has a rotational kinetic energy of 2.14 × 10 29 J.
The moment of inertia plays much the same role in rotational dynamics as mass does in linear dynamics, describing the relationship between angular momentum and angular velocity, torque and angular acceleration, and several other quantities. The symbols I and J are usually used to refer to the moment of inertia or polar moment of inertia.