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In physics and chemistry, a degree of freedom is an independent physical parameter in the chosen parameterization of a physical system.More formally, given a parameterization of a physical system, the number of degrees of freedom is the smallest number of parameters whose values need to be known in order to always be possible to determine the values of all parameters in the chosen ...
In many scientific fields, the degrees of freedom of a system is the number of parameters of the system that may vary independently. For example, a point in the plane has two degrees of freedom for translation: its two coordinates; a non-infinitesimal object on the plane might have additional degrees of freedoms related to its orientation.
An example of a simple open chain is a serial robot manipulator. These robotic systems are constructed from a series of links connected by six one degree-of-freedom revolute or prismatic joints, so the system has six degrees of freedom. An example of a simple closed chain is the RSSR spatial four-bar linkage.
A degree of freedom corresponds to one quantity that changes the configuration of the system, for example the angle of a pendulum, or the arc length traversed by a bead along a wire. If it is possible to find from the constraints as many independent variables as there are degrees of freedom, these can be used as generalized coordinates. [ 5 ]
For example, 18 coordinates and 17 constraints could be used to describe the motion of the slider-crank with rigid bodies. However, as there is only one degree of freedom, the equation of motion could be also represented by means of one equation and one degree of freedom, using e.g. the angle of the driving link as degree of freedom.
CCR/CAR algebras with infinitely many degrees of freedom have many inequivalent irreducible unitary representations. If the theory is defined over Minkowski space , we may choose the unitary irrep containing a vacuum state although that isn't always necessary.
An effective field theory includes the appropriate degrees of freedom to describe physical phenomena occurring at a chosen length scale or energy scale, while ignoring substructure and degrees of freedom at shorter distances (or, equivalently, at higher energies). Intuitively, one averages over the behavior of the underlying theory at shorter ...
In equations, the typical symbol for degrees of freedom is ν (lowercase Greek letter nu).In text and tables, the abbreviation "d.f." is commonly used. R. A. Fisher used n to symbolize degrees of freedom but modern usage typically reserves n for sample size.