Lectures on Physics has been derived from Benjamin Crowell's Light and Matter series of free introductory textbooks on physics. See the editorial for more information....

A system with its center of mass at rest

In the special case of an object whose center of mass is at rest, the spin theorem implies that the object's angular momentum is the same regardless of what axis we choose. (This is an even stronger statement than the choice of axis theorem, which only guarantees that angular momentum is conserved for any given choice of axis, without specifying that it is the same for all such choices.)




Last Update: 2009-06-21