Newtonian Mechanics – Understanding the Physics of “Mad Tea Party” Ride

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Let's say you have a body rotating about its centre of mass in a rotating frame. But the centre of mass of the body does not coincide with the rotation axis of the rotating frame.

We can often see such a set-up in real life when we go to amusement parks.enter image description here

This spinning tea cup ride (also called "Mad Tea Party") consists of many individual cups spinning about their own axes of rotation, which are all then placed on a large circular spinning plate.

Let the frame of the large spinning plate be $S_1$, spinning at angular velocity $\omega_1$ with respect to the lab frame. Let the frame of the tea cups with $S_2$, spinning at angular velocity $\omega_2$ with respect to their individual axes of rotation (labelled in the diagram as $\mathbf{z_1}$, $\mathbf{z_2}$…).

What will happen if one of the tea cup is tilted in a fixed direction wrt to the bottom spinning plate, such that it's angular momentum is not pointing straight upwards (but tilted to the side) How would you add up the 2 angular momentum in this case? Since the angular momentum changes direction, there must also be a torque. About which point is the torque applied?

In other words, in 3D space, where will be the "origin" of the angular momentum vector (for example of a pendulum, angular momentum vector will originate from the pivot point of the pendulum)

Best Answer

You need to add the spin angular momentum to the orbital angular momentum.

The spin angular momentum is the angular momentum of the body about its centre of mass and the orbital angular momentum is the angular momentum of the centre of mass of the body about the axis defined in the lab frame, shown as a red blob in your diagram.

So for the top left cup, $L_{\rm spin} = I_{\rm \text{CoM cup}}\,\omega_1$ and $L_{\rm orbital} = I_{\text {red blob}}\,\color{red}{\omega_1}$

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