15.0 Conservation of angular momentum by Benjamin Crowell, Light and Matter licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
A tornado touches down in Spring Hill, Kansas, May 20, 1957.
Chapter 15. Conservation of angular momentum
“Sure, and maybe the sun won't come up tomorrow.” Of course, the sun only appears to go up and down because the earth spins, so the cliche should really refer to the unlikelihood of the earth's stopping its rotation abruptly during the night. Why can't it stop? It wouldn't violate conservation of momentum, because the earth's rotation doesn't add anything to its momentum. While California spins in one direction, some equally massive part of India goes the opposite way, canceling its momentum. A halt to Earth's rotation would entail a drop in kinetic energy, but that energy could simply be converted into some other form, such as heat.
Other examples along these lines are not hard to find. A hydrogen atom spins at the same rate for billions of years. A high-diver who is rotating when he comes off the board does not need to make any physical effort to continue rotating, and indeed would be unable to stop rotating before he hit the water.
These observations have the hallmarks of a conservation law:
A closed system is involved. Nothing is making an effort to twist the earth, the hydrogen atom, or the high-diver. They are isolated from rotation-changing influences, i.e., they are closed systems.
Something remains unchanged. There appears to be a numerical quantity for measuring rotational motion such that the total amount of that quantity remains constant in a closed system.
Something can be transferred back and forth without changing the total amount. In figure a, the jumper wants to get his feet out in front of him so he can keep from doing a “face plant” when he lands. Bringing his feet forward would involve a certain quantity of counterclockwise rotation, but he didn't start out with any rotation when he left the ground. Suppose we consider counterclockwise as positive and clockwise as negative. The only way his legs can acquire some positive rotation is if some other part of his body picks up an equal amount of negative rotation. This is why he swings his arms up behind him, clockwise.
a / An early photograph of an old-fashioned long-jump.
What numerical measure of rotational motion is conserved? Car engines and old-fashioned LP records have speeds of rotation measured in rotations per minute (r.p.m.), but the number of rotations per minute (or per second) is not a conserved quantity. A twirling figure skater, for instance, can pull her arms in to increase her r.p.m.'s. The first section of this chapter deals with the numerical definition of the quantity of rotation that results in a valid conservation law.
15.0 Conservation of angular momentum by Benjamin Crowell, Light and Matter licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.