I don't get why the rolling ball has only 2 degrees of freedom. The degrees of freedom of a system is defined as the number of independent variables that can vary due to a small displacement. When the ball is displaced, the euler angles have to change as well. Also now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think displacement is very well defined for a system with more than 1 point paricles.
I don't get why the rolling ball has only 2 degrees of freedom. The degrees of freedom of a system is defined as the number of independent variables that can vary due to a small displacement. When the ball is displaced, the euler angles have to change as well. Also now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think displacement is very well defined for a system with more than 1 point paricles.
Been a while since I looked at this , but off the top of my head the degrees of freedom are the 2 independent axis , x and y.