Suppose we have a bicycle wheel rotating about a fixed axis at its center, with its axis facing into

the
page as the positive or direction. Its center of mass is located at the origin of this axis of rotation.
Suppose that the wheel is translating, so that the center of mass is moving at a velocity of with
respected to the ground frame. The wheel is also rotating about the center of mass at an angular speed
of \omega in the clockwise direction, which we consider here positive. The vector of the angular speed
is then pointing into the page.

Using Newtons second law, the total external force acting on the wheel is equal to the total mass of the
wheel times the acceleration of the center of mass.

From this equation, we can understand the translational motion of the wheel.

Now, lets suppose we have an observer thats traveling at a velocity of alongside the wheel. The
wheel, as observed by the traveling observer, has no translational motion. We can now consider the
wheels frame of reference, or the center-of-mass frame of the wheels motion.

The wheel, in this frame, is at rest with respect to the center of mass. But it still rotates at angular
velocity about the center of mass.

From this frame of reference, we can focus on the rotational motion of the wheel.
Let the particle rotate about the axis .

Within a small time interval let the particles motion be represented by the vector , whose
direction is along the axis obeying the right-hand rule, and whose magnitude is equal to the angle ,
which is the angle that the particle traverses in rotation.

Let the position of the particle from the origin to position be . Then the particles distance from its
axis of rotation, along the plane of its rotation, is equal to .

If we let the displacement of the particle from position in time interval be , then the magnitude
of displacement is equal to . But also notice that the displacement vector is
always perpendicular to the vectors and , so by definition of the cross product, we can write the
displacement as a cross product of vectors:

Now, we divide the equation by the time interval :

But doesnt change with respect to the particle. Using the property of scalar multiplication with a
cross product:

Now, we take the limit as :

If we let and , the equation becomes:

Lets consider a rigid body. Lets say our rigid body is rotating about an axis passing through a point
in the rigid body.

Suppose we have a small element of our rigid body with mass , thats a distance from point
. The element is also an angle from the x-axis. We also want to describe a coordinate system
(radial direction), (tangential direction), and (perpendicular to and ) for element .

Our rigid body is rotating, so we also describe the angular velocity, which is the rate the angle is
changing with respect to :

But every point in our rigid body has the same angular velocity. So, the tangential velocity of each
element in the object is:

where and is the distance each element is from the axis of rotation.

To find the kinetic energy of our rigid body, since the object is not translating, we sum up the rotational
kinetic energy of every single mass element in the body.

The kinetic energy of each element is:

Because is the same for every single mass element, so lets say the total rotational kinetic energy is
the sum over from 1 to of the kinetic energy of each element as follows:

Since our rigid body is continuous, we take the limit of the summation in parenthesis as :

where weve integrated over the body, is the infinitesimal body element, and weve subscripted to
emphasize that is the distance from the axis of rotation to element .
 is what we call the moment of inertia of the rigid body. Its important to remember that this is a
moment of inertia about a particular axis, an axis passing perpendicular to the plane of rotation and
through point .

What does the moment of inertia mean? First of all, its also called the angular mass or rotational
inertia. It is the rotational analog of mass for linear motion. It is the quantity expressing a bodys
tendency to resist angular acceleration, and it determines the torque needed for a desired angular
acceleration about a rotational axis. Notice from the equation that the greater the mass, the greater the
moment of inertia. The greater the distance from the axis of rotation, the greater the moment of inertia.

So to summarize, the total rotational kinetic energy of a rigid body is given by:

And lets contrast that to the total translational kinetic energy of the object:

where is the velocity of the center of mass of the object and is the total mass of the object.