This chapter discusses the importance of circular motion and rotations, whose applications to chemical systems are plentiful. Circular motion is the book’s first example of a special case of motion using the laws developed in previous chapters. The chapter begins with the basic definitions of circular motion; as uniform rotation around a principle axis is much easier to consider, it is the focus of this chapter and is used to develop some key ideas. The chapter discusses angular displacement, angular velocity, angular momentum, torque, rigid bodies, orbital and spin momenta, inertia tensors and non-inertial frames and explores fictitious forces as well as transformations in rotating frames.
Alignment of Self-propelled Rigid Bodies: From Particle Systems to Macroscopic Equations