SPA5304 Physical Dynamics Homework 6

Due on Friday 1st March 2019 at 16:00

“Sweet is the sound of the pouring rain

And the stream that falls from hill to plain.”
– Unknown hobbit

Problem [20 marks + 5 bonus]

Mr. Peregrin Took got a new mug for his birthday (see figure). However, the mug is too big and he
is afraid that he might drop it. Let’s help the hobbit by computing the moment of inertia tensor of
the mug in the center-of-mass (COM) frame. (Note that this is not the coordinate system shown
in the figure.)
The mug consists of the following three pieces1 :

(i) A cylinder of unit radius and height = 2. The wall of the cylinder is infinitely thin and its
mass per unit area is µ = 1.

(ii) There is an infinitely thin unit radius disk at the bottom of the mug. Its mass per unit area
is again µ = 1. (This disk is not visible in the picture.)

(iii) Finally, there is a handle attached to the mug. It is a semi-circle of linear mass density ρ = 1.
It has unit radius and its center lies at (x, y, z) = (1, 0, 0) as in the figure.

1
Hobbits measure small distances in spans. These units will be omitted here.

1
(a) Compute the masses of the three pieces (cylinder, disk, semi-circle). [3]

(b) Find the COMs of the three pieces. [3]

(c) Find the COM for the entire mug. [2]

(d) Now compute the inertia tensors for the three pieces with respect to their own COMs.
Namely, for each piece, consider the coordinate system whose axes are parallel to those in the
figure, but its origin is at the COM of the piece. [12]

(e) The final step is to add up the three tensors. But they were computed in different coordinate
systems! Oh no....
Luckily, Galadriel has just arrived in town. When we talk to her she has an idea: let’s use
the tensor generalization of the parallel axis theorem. This theorem relates the moment of
inertia tensor computed in a COM frame (Iab COM ) to the inertia tensor in another displaced
O 0
frame (Iab ). The assumption of the theorem is that the displacement cannot involve rotation.
If the displacement vector connecting the origin of the COM system to the origin O0 of the new
system is denoted by w,
~ then the inertia tensor in the new system is given by
O 0 COM
Iab = Iab ~ 2 − wa wb )
+ M (δab w

where M is the mass of the object and δab is the Kronecker delta (a, b = 1, 2, 3).
Use this theorem to obtain the inertia tensors for the three pieces in the frame whose origin is
the mug’s center-of-mass. Add up the three tensors to obtain the moment of inertia tensor of
the mug. [+5]