17、Understanding the Angular Momentum of Rigid Bodies

Understanding the Angular Momentum of Rigid Bodies

1. Introduction to Angular Momentum

Angular momentum is a fundamental concept in the study of rigid bodies in motion. The angular momentum about a point (p) of a single moving particle is the “moment of momentum,” calculated as the cross - product of the position vector from point (p) to the particle and the particle’s linear momentum. For a system of particles, the angular momentum is the sum of the angular momenta of individual particles. As the number of particles in a rigid body increases, the summation is replaced by an integral over all differential mass elements.

1.1 Definition of Angular Momentum

The angular momentum (h_{\mathbb{X},p}) of a rigid body in the frame (\mathbb{X}) about