Ask any engineer what the velocity of a point on a rigidbody is, and he will correctly say that it is the timerate of change of a linear position vector. Ask anyengineer what angular velocity is, and ...

I love using seemingly random data to figure out stuff I wouldn't otherwise know. You can do this with all kinds of things, but in this example, I use video that I recorded from an airplane to figure ...

Introduction You might have seen figure skaters spinning around quickly and then tucking their arms to spin faster—or opening them to spin more slowly. This happens, thanks to a physics concept known ...

Consider the rotor of a gyroscope. The rotor is attached to a frame that is rotating about a fixed vertical axes with a constant rate of ω 1, and with the rotor rotating relative to that frame at a ...

Consider the mechanism shown below made up of moveable links AB, BD and DE. Link AB is rotating CCW at a constant rate. Point C is the center of rotation for BD, where point C is at the intersection ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...