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The Kinematics of Rigid Body Motion, GPS Ch. 4: Ijk Ijk

1. This document provides instructions for Homework #6 in PHYS 601, Fall 2014, including problems from Goldstein, Poole, and Safko's Classical Mechanics textbook. 2. Students are asked to solve problems related to rigid body motion and angular momentum, including identities for antisymmetric tensors and commutation relations. 3. They are also asked questions about rotation matrices and their properties without solving a specific problem. The homework is worth a total of 40 points.

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Amina Ibrahim
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72 views

The Kinematics of Rigid Body Motion, GPS Ch. 4: Ijk Ijk

1. This document provides instructions for Homework #6 in PHYS 601, Fall 2014, including problems from Goldstein, Poole, and Safko's Classical Mechanics textbook. 2. Students are asked to solve problems related to rigid body motion and angular momentum, including identities for antisymmetric tensors and commutation relations. 3. They are also asked questions about rotation matrices and their properties without solving a specific problem. The homework is worth a total of 40 points.

Uploaded by

Amina Ibrahim
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Homework #6 — PHYS 601 — Fall 2014 Professor Victor Yakovenko

Due on Thursday, October 27, 2014 online Office: 2115 Physics


Web page: http://physics.umd.edu/~yakovenk/teaching/
GPS: Goldstein, Poole, Safko, Classical Mechanics, 3rd edition, 2002, ISBN 0-201-65702-3
LL: Landau and Lifshitz, Mechanics, 3rd edition, 1976, ISBN 978-0-7506-2896-9
Total score is 40 points.

The Kinematics of Rigid Body Motion, GPS Ch. 4


1. Problem GPS 4.14, 15 points. Identities for antisymmetric tensors.
Do Part (b) first, because it is easier. Additional question to Part (b): Show that
ijk ijk = 6.
Then do Part (a). Additional questions: Using the formula derived in Part (a),
prove the following vector relations
(A × B) · (C × D) = (A · C) (B · D) − (A · D) (B · C) (1)
A × (B × C) = B (A · C) − C (A · B) (2)
(A × B) × (C × D) = [A · (B × D)] C − [A · (B × C)] D (3)

2. Commutation relations for angular momentum, 15 points.

(a) Problem 4.17. Verify commutation relations for the generators of rotation M̂i
in GPS Eqs. (4.79) and (4.80). Here I use the hat to indicate that M̂i is a matrix,
whereas the index i indicates that there are three such matrices. Compare with the
commutation relations of the angular momentum operator in quantum mechanics.

Additional questions:
The Poisson bracket [f, g] of two functions f and g is defined in LL Eq. (42.5) and
GPS Eq. (9.67) as
∂f ∂g ∂f ∂g
[f, g] = − , (4)
∂rk ∂pk ∂pk ∂rk
where summation of the repeated index k is implied in tensor notation.

(b) Let us introduce the angular momentum Li = (r × p)i = ijk rj pk , the infinites-
imal angles of rotation δφ, and the scalar product δφ · L = δφj Lj . Calculate
explicitly the Poisson brackets in the following equations in tensor notation and
show that they give the right-hand sides of these equations, in agreement with
GPS Eq. (4.75)
δr = [r, δφ · L] = r × δφ, δp = [p, δφ · L] = p × δφ. (5)
Here the angles δφ are constant parameters, which do not depend on r and p, so
they are not subject to differentiation in the Poisson brackets. Thus, the angular
momentum L is the generator of rotations via the Poisson brackets in Eq. (5).
2 Homework #6, Phys601, Fall 2014, Prof. Yakovenko

(c) Calculate the Poisson brackets between different components of the angular mo-
mentum L = r × p and prove the following relation

[Li , Lj ] = ijk Lk . (6)

Compare Eq. (6) with the commutation relations of the angular momentum op-
erator in quantum mechanics.

3. Inspired by Problem 4.10, 10 points. Don’t do Problem 4.10; only answer the
questions below.
Let us denote by R̂z (φ) the matrix of rotation around the axis z by the angle φ. Then,
a rotation by φ + dφ is a composition of two rotations: R̂z (φ + dφ) = R̂z (dφ) R̂z (φ),
where R̂z (dφ) = 1̂ + M̂z dφ. Here I used the equation above GPS Eq. (4.79) and the
equation above GPS Eq. (4.68) with the change of notation A → R̂.

(a) Introducing the notation dR̂z (φ) = R̂z (φ + dφ) − R̂z (φ), show that the rotation
matrix satisfies the following differential equation:

dR̂z (φ)
= M̂z R̂z (φ). (7)
dφ
Show that the solution of this equation is
∞
(M̂z φ)n
R̂z (φ) = eM̂z φ =
X
. (8)
n=0 n!
!
0 −1
(b) Let us denote by m̂z = the (x, y) part of the matrix M̂z in Eq. (4.79).
1 0
(The third column and row of M̂z are trivial and decouple from the first two.)
Show that
m̂2z = −1̂, m̂3z = −m̂z , m̂4z = 1̂. (9)
(c) Using Eq. (9) in Eq. (8), show that
 
cos φ − sin φ 0
R̂z (φ) =  sin φ cos φ 0  , (10)
 

0 0 1

in agreement with GPS Eq. (4.43). (Never mind the difference in the sign of φ.)

October 20, 2014

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