Six Degrees of Freedom
The motion of a ship at sea has the six degrees of freedom of a rigid body, and is described as:
Translation:
- Moving up and down (heaving);
- Moving left and right (swaying);
- Moving forward and backward (surging);
Rotation
- Tilting forward and backward (pitching);
- Turning left and right (yawing);
- Tilting side to side (rolling).
The trajectory of an airplane in flight has three degrees of freedom and its attitude along the trajectory has three degrees of freedom, for a total of six degrees of freedom.
Read more about this topic: Degrees Of Freedom (mechanics)
Famous quotes containing the words degrees and/or freedom:
“How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.”
—Gérard De Nerval (1808–1855)
“All gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must begin in blood.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)