What kind of motion can a rigid body have?

Q. What kind of motion can a rigid body have?

Rigid Body and Its Motions

By definition a rigid body consists of many mass points (m) located at different points (r. ) but. (r. -r, ) is fixed so it neither changes shape nor size as it moves. This buys considerable simplification in describing the two types of motion it can have

The two types of motion a rigid body can undergo are;

• Translational Motion
• Rotational Motion

Translational motion is the motion by which a body shifts from one point in space to another.
Translational motion is motion that involves the sliding of an object in one or more of the three dimensions: x, y or z. But an object can still be moving even when it's just sitting at a particular x-, y- and z-coordinate; it can still spin.

Rotational motion is where an object spins around an internal axis in a continuous way. An ice-skater can do this by spinning on the spot. She will give herself rotational energy. And because energy is always conserved and a smaller object must spin faster to have the same energy, when she moves her arms in towards her body, her rotation speed will increase - the spinning will get faster and faster.