AY 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Tidal Locking, Tidal Force, Interstellar Cloud
29 Jan 2018
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Document Summary
A property of an object that is rotating or moving along a curved path (like an orbit) Example: earth has both rotational angular momentum and orbital angular momentum. These can be described in physical ways and are characterized by numerical values. The total angular momentum of an isolated system os conserved. Objects in an isolated system may exchange angular momentum. If they do, one must gain angular momentum while the other must lose angular momentum, in order to keep the total angular momentum constant. The result could be a change in orbit properties or rotational periods. Only an encounter with an external object like a passing star could change the angular momentum of a system. In astronomy, conservation of angular momentum plays the following roles. If an object that initially is large and slowly rotating starts to shrink, it will spin faster.
