Arbitrarily Shaped Rigid Rotor
An arbitrarily shaped rigid rotor is a rigid body of arbitrary shape with its center of mass fixed (or in uniform rectilinear motion) in field-free space R3, so that its energy consists only of rotational kinetic energy (and possibly constant translational energy that can be ignored). A rigid body can be (partially) characterized by the three eigenvalues of its moment of inertia tensor, which are real nonnegative values known as principal moments of inertia. In microwave spectroscopy—the spectroscopy based on rotational transitions—one usually classifies molecules (seen as rigid rotors) as follows:
- spherical rotors
- symmetric rotors
- oblate symmetric rotors
- prolate symmetric rotors
- asymmetric rotors
This classification depends on the relative magnitudes of the principal moments of inertia.
Read more about this topic: Rigid Rotor
Famous quotes containing the words arbitrarily, shaped and/or rigid:
“Good poetry could not have been otherwise written than it is. The first time you hear it, it sounds rather as if copied out of some invisible tablet in the Eternal mind than as if arbitrarily composed by the poet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people’s children.”
—Marian Wright Edelman (20th century)
“During our twenties...we act toward the new adulthood the way sociologists tell us new waves of immigrants acted on becoming Americans: we adopt the host culture’s values in an exaggerated and rigid fashion until we can rethink them and make them our own. Our idea of what adults are and what we’re supposed to be is composed of outdated childhood concepts brought forward.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)