Homework 7: Rigid Bodies

Prof. Miguel Mostaf a Colorado State University

(Dated: Due on Friday November 19, 2010 at the physics main ofce before end-of-business (i.e., 5 PM).)

1. Find the principal moments of inertia of a homogeneous circular cone with base radius R and height h. (Hint: Fig. 38, page 102.) 2. A uniform circular disk is constrained to spin with an angular velocity about an axis that makes an angle with the axis of symmetry (normal to the disk). Find the half angle of the cone in space described by the axis of symmetry and also the period of this rotation. 3. An asymmetric top ( I1 < I2 < I3 ) executes a torque-free motion with L2 = 2 E I2 . If initially lies in the 1 and e 3 , integrate the Eulers equations to obtain the solution 1 (t), 2 (t), and 3 (t) as a function plane of e of o =
L I2

2E L

and = o t

( I2 I1 )( I3 I2 ) . I1 I3

4. Find the frequency of small oscillations of a compound pendulum in terms of its principal moments of inertia. 5. The story of the plate. After the war, Feynman became depressed. His rst wife had just died of tuberculosis and the realization of the awful destructive power of the bomb he had helped make had nally sunk in. He was teaching at Cornell, but he had no taste for it. He couldnt concentrate. Then, one day, he was in the school cafeteria and some guy started fooling around, tossing a plate in the air. Feynman watched the design on the rim of the plate as it spun and he saw that as it spun, the plate wobbled. He got fascinated, and he tried to gure out the relationship between the spin and the wobble. He spent months on this. And he nally came up with a complicated equation, which he showed to Hans Bethe. And Bethe said Thats interesting, but whats the importance of it? And Feynman said, It has no importance, its just fun! And thats the thing it not only brought him out of his slump, but that playful inquiry eventually led him to the work that won him the Nobel Prize! Now the story according to Richard Feynman himself [1]: [...] I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling. I had nothing to do, so I start guring out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! [...] (Bethes part goes here.) [...] I went on to work out equations for wobbles. Then I thought about how the electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then theres the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it [...] [...] The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate. Feynman was (obviously!) right about quantum electrodynamics. But what about the plate?

[1] Surely Youre Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman, W. W. Norton & Co. (April 17, 1997), pages 173-174.