Rotational Kinetic Energy

The rotational kinetic energy of a rigid assembly of masses (or mass distribution) is the sum of the rotational kinetic energies of the component masses. Therefore, consider a point-mass rotating^B.13 in a circular orbit of radius and angular velocity (radians per second), as shown in Fig.B.4. To make it a closed system, we can imagine an effectively infinite mass at the origin . Then the speed of the mass along the circle is , and its kinetic energy is . Since this is what we want for the rotational kinetic energy of the system, it is convenient to define it in terms of angular velocity in radians per second. Thus, we write

where

is called the mass moment of inertia.

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About the Author: Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.