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Earth's rotation axis moves with respect to the fixed stars (inertial space); the components of this motion are precession and nutation. It also moves with respect to Earth's crust; this is called polar motion. Precession is a rotation of Earth's rotation axis, caused primarily by external torques from the gravity of the Sun, Moon and other bodies.
The rotation has caused the planet to settle on a spheroid shape, such that the normal force, the gravitational force and the centrifugal force exactly balance each other on a "horizontal" surface. (See equatorial bulge.) The Coriolis effect caused by the rotation of the Earth can be seen indirectly through the motion of a Foucault pendulum.
The Earth's rotation rate is still slowing down, though gradually, by about two thousandths of a second per rotation every 100 years. [1] Estimates of how fast the Earth was rotating in the past vary, because it is not known exactly how the moon was formed. Estimates of the Earth's rotation 500 million years ago are around 20 modern hours per ...
Figure 1: Velocity v and acceleration a in uniform circular motion at angular rate ω; the speed is constant, but the velocity is always tangential to the orbit; the acceleration has constant magnitude, but always points toward the center of rotation. Figure 2: The velocity vectors at time t and time t + dt are moved from the orbit on the left ...
where I s is the moment of inertia, ω s is the angular velocity of spin about the spin axis, m is the mass, g is the acceleration due to gravity, θ is the angle between the spin axis and the axis of precession and r is the distance between the center of mass and the pivot. The torque vector originates at the center of mass.
Instantaneous velocity of a falling object that has travelled distance on a planet with mass , with the combined radius of the planet and altitude of the falling object being , this equation is used for larger radii where is smaller than standard at the surface of Earth, but assumes a small distance of fall, so the change in is small and ...
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.
Rotation (angular displacement) of a planar figure around a point Rotational orbit v spin Relations between rotation axis, plane of orbit and axial tilt (for Earth) Mathematically, a rotation is a rigid body movement which, unlike a translation, keeps at least one point fixed. This definition applies to rotations in two dimensions (in a plane ...