Talk:Angular momentum

The reason the proof of angular momentum was originally attached to Torque as a subpage, was because I considered the proof trivial, and not interesting to the majority of users interested in the article. In fact, I thought it would scare aware the math-phobic general public. I wrote it shortly after I rewrote Torque. The previous version of that article contained the misconception that the derivative of angular momentum is equal to torque only in special cases. I wrote Torque/Angular momentum proof to justify my alteration, to explain to whoever wrote the article why I'm right, and of course to increase the amount of information in Wikipedia by a tiny, trivial amount. I disagree with its inclusion in Angular momentum because the inclusion of this trivial, apparently random factoid is inelegant, confusing, and makes the article overly mathematical. -- Tim Starling 01:52 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)

Only, it's non-trivial. To make it trivial requires certain quite reasonable assumptions - but a rigorous demonstration is far more awkward than (say) energy conservation. Essentially, in general you are dealing with an infinite number of particles. Then you have to assume that some terms in an infinite sum go to zero, which isn't obvious. PML.

That depends on your definition of trivial, doesn't it? There's trivial as in the maths is easy, and there's trivial as in List of songs which have the word Song in title or lyrics. I think it's both -- it's trivial mathematically for someone competent in the field, and also trivial in the sense that most people reading angular momentum or torque don't care about how to prove this identity. But I'm getting off the point. Even if it were non-trivial mathematically, it still shouldn't be in the article, due to the confusion factor. Since confusion factor increases with non-triviality, your statement seems to support my main point. -- Tim Starling 03:02 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)

I would say it supports the reverse: since there is something to be said, it is better to note it than to slide past it. Your remarks, while accurate as far as they go, don't lead to us leaving it out but to us making the editing draw attention to the fact that there is more for interested people to follow up - without distracting casual browsers. The principle of a good encyclopaedia. Now, how to achieve both? If in doubt, I'd rather leave it in. PML.

How do we achieve both? Simple, by leaving it how it was when I wrote it, i.e. on its own page. That's the whole point -- I'm responding to Looxix suggesting merging Proof of angular momentum (which started out as Torque/Angular momentum proof) with Angular momentum, an act which I disagree with. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. -- Tim Starling 05:44 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)

No problem for me, it was only an suggestion/question. In fact, until we have the possibility to link within a specific part of a page, I often prefer to have well linked small pages than one BIG page having all the sub-subject linked to the main article. -- Looxix 20:47 Apr 28, 2003 (UTC)