- #1
aaaa202
- 1,169
- 2
I'm starting on lagrangian mechanics and is a little puzzled by the use of generalized coordinates. Shortly, what is a degree of freedom?
And what I find harder to understand, why is it that a holonomic constraint allows you to remove a degree of freedom? Consider for instance two particles between which the distance is fixed. This gives 5 degrees of freedom, at least so I heard. Because that is kind of weird to me. As far as I see it the particles can still move anywhere on the x,y and z axis can't they? I can see that in terms of rotations you can only make 2 different ones, and then you can translate the two particles in 3 different directions. But when is it that rotations comes into the picture, because for a collection of N particles you would just have 3N dof, which correspond to movement in three different directions in a euclidean coordinate system.
Talking about the problem with 2 particles with constant distance between them, is it then possible directly, mathematically from the constrain r=c to show that only 5 dof are needed? And can anyone do it?
And what I find harder to understand, why is it that a holonomic constraint allows you to remove a degree of freedom? Consider for instance two particles between which the distance is fixed. This gives 5 degrees of freedom, at least so I heard. Because that is kind of weird to me. As far as I see it the particles can still move anywhere on the x,y and z axis can't they? I can see that in terms of rotations you can only make 2 different ones, and then you can translate the two particles in 3 different directions. But when is it that rotations comes into the picture, because for a collection of N particles you would just have 3N dof, which correspond to movement in three different directions in a euclidean coordinate system.
Talking about the problem with 2 particles with constant distance between them, is it then possible directly, mathematically from the constrain r=c to show that only 5 dof are needed? And can anyone do it?