Re: The Olympics

[Rick Tarara <rtarara@SAINTMARYS.EDU>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Bowman"

> Regarding Rick T's comment:
>
> > Perhaps one of the confusions here (at least for me) is that looking at
> > Bruce's link (below) it is now clear that the claim is NOT that the
> > gymnast/diver imparts NO angular momentum on takeoff, only that they
often
> > impart no angular momentum around the vertical axis--that is, they do
impart
> > AM around a horizontal axis perpendicular to their direction of motion.
.......
> Total angular momentum is a (bi)vector.  As such all of its components
> are *individually conserved* in the absence of corresponding components
> of the externally applied net torque.

And this still confuses me, but at least I can see that there is some
angular momentum and some rotational KE to work with.   How the body
twisting can make it _ appear_ that there is twisting/tumbling around a
different axis without violating the conservation of the initial AM still
eludes me.

Rick  ;-(