Talk:History of the Earth
Latest comment: 13 years ago by K in topic Angular Momentum
Rename this article? change
I think this article should be renamed to History of the Earth. Fafas (talk) 00:29, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
- That's the name of it's enWiki counterpart... for the sake of consitency I think i'm going to go ahead and move it Jamesofur (talk) 00:32, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
Angular Momentum change
At the start of the article we have, "... the solar nebula began to contract, rotate and gain angular momentum."
Simply contracting is not going to increase the angular momentum. When a figure skater pulls her arms in and speeds up, her angular momentum does not change. What changes is her angular velocity, which increases because her moment of inertia decreases. The product of the 2 are her angular momentum.
Similarly with the solar nebula, the contraction in itself would increase the speed of rotation, but leave the angular momentum unchanged.