Poinsot Construction

Animates the Poinsot Construction

The Poinsot Construction is the fundamental visualization of torque-free motion of rigid bodies. Per Goldstein: "the polehode rolls without slipping on the herpolhode lying in the invariable plane."

The methods included here allow for the exploration of torque-free, rigid body motion through the constructions of the kinetic energy and inertia ellipsoids (Binet construction and Poinsot construction).

Script binet_construction generates a (static) kinetic energy ellipsoid. Script poinsot_construction generates an animation of the Poinsot construction in the inertial and body-fixed frames.

See headers of individual files for more details on additional functionality.