How can an object spin at constant angular velocity when its parts are accelerating?

How can a spinning object keep constant velocity with the direction of its parts changing at every instant?

When you consider an object as rotating, you normally stop thinking of its parts as moving in their own independent ways and treat the whole assembly as a single object. While it’s true that the various parts of that object are accelerating in response to internal forces those parts exert on another, the object as a whole is doing a simpler motion: it’s rotating about some axis. This ability to focus on a simple motion in the midst of countless complicated motions is an example of the beautiful simplifications that physics allows in some cases.

Leave a Reply