[quote name='0r0d' timestamp='1357893867' post='5020236']
The Earth is not a perfect sphere, nor is it a perfectly rigid body with uniform density, or any of that. It sounds like you want math more suited to billiard balls, not planets.
[/quote]
Pretty darn close though. The earth is in fact smoother then a billiard ball, but it's slightly squashed at the poles.. not that much though, so you probably wouldn't notice it unless you are a professional pool player :)
I am not sure that's true. At least in Newtonian mechanics, there is a notion of an inertial frame of reference, and rotations are the same under all inertial frames of reference.
Mhh. You may be right. My intuition was that if you are rotating in empty space with no point of reference, you cannot know you are rotating, whereas if you have a point of reference which is not stationary under your own frame of reference (isn't orbiting around you at the same rate you are rotating) then you can be aware of your rotational motion, so rotation is also a relative quantity, but I am probably wrong - I was never that good at rotational mechanics.
I am not sure that's true. At least in Newtonian mechanics, there is a notion of an inertial frame of reference, and rotations are the same under all inertial frames of reference.
Mhh. You may be right. My intuition was that if you are rotating in empty space with no point of reference, you cannot know you are rotating, whereas if you have a point of reference which is not stationary under your own frame of reference (isn't orbiting around you at the same rate you are rotating) then you can be aware of your rotational motion, so rotation is also a relative quantity, but I am probably wrong - I was never that good at rotational mechanics.
