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Motion of Rigid Bodies
So far, we have considered the motion of bodies that can be considered as particles. In this chapter,
we consider motions in which the nite size of bodies is important. Such bodies will be assumed
to be rigid. By a rigid body, we mean that the relative position of the parts of the body remains
unchanged during motion. The body thus moves as a whole. In other words, a rigid body can be
considered to be a system of particles subject to the set of constraints
r
ij
= c
ij
(12.1)
where r
ij
is the distance between the ith and jth particles, and c
ij
are constants at all times. This deni-
tion ...