ON A SIMPLE EXPERIMENT ON THE FREE ROTATION OF A RULER AND OTHER LAMINAS

The torque-free rotation of a solid body is unstable about the axis wi th the intermediate principal moment of inertia, Such an instability c an be shown with a simple experiment using a ruler, In this work, the equations of Euler are integrated and the orientation of the ruler, re ferred to the laboratory reference frame, determined as a function of time. This allows a beautiful comparison between the observed rotation of the ruler and the theory behind it. (C) 1996 American Association of Physics Teachers.