Earth's rotationEarth's rotation or Earth's spin is the rotation of planet Earth around its own axis, as well as changes in the orientation of the rotation axis in space. Earth rotates eastward, in prograde motion. As viewed from the northern polar star Polaris, Earth turns counterclockwise. The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. This point is distinct from Earth's North Magnetic Pole.
Atan2In computing and mathematics, the function atan2 is the 2-argument arctangent. By definition, is the angle measure (in radians, with ) between the positive -axis and the ray from the origin to the point in the Cartesian plane. Equivalently, is the argument (also called phase or angle) of the complex number The function first appeared in the programming language Fortran in 1961. It was originally intended to return a correct and unambiguous value for the angle θ in converting from Cartesian coordinates (x, y) to polar coordinates (r, θ).
Rotation (mathematics)Rotation in mathematics is a concept originating in geometry. Any rotation is a motion of a certain space that preserves at least one point. It can describe, for example, the motion of a rigid body around a fixed point. Rotation can have a sign (as in the sign of an angle): a clockwise rotation is a negative magnitude so a counterclockwise turn has a positive magnitude. A rotation is different from other types of motions: translations, which have no fixed points, and (hyperplane) reflections, each of them having an entire (n − 1)-dimensional flat of fixed points in a n-dimensional space.
VersorIn mathematics, a versor is a quaternion of norm one (a unit quaternion). Each versor has the form where the r2 = −1 condition means that r is a unit-length vector quaternion (or that the first component of r is zero, and the last three components of r are a unit vector in 3 dimensions). The corresponding 3-dimensional rotation has the angle 2a about the axis r in axis–angle representation. In case a = π/2 (a right angle), then , and the resulting unit vector is termed a right versor.
BivectorIn mathematics, a bivector or 2-vector is a quantity in exterior algebra or geometric algebra that extends the idea of scalars and vectors. If a scalar is considered a degree-zero quantity, and a vector is a degree-one quantity, then a bivector can be thought of as being of degree two. Bivectors have applications in many areas of mathematics and physics. They are related to complex numbers in two dimensions and to both pseudovectors and quaternions in three dimensions.
Rigid bodyIn physics, a rigid body, also known as a rigid object, is a solid body in which deformation is zero or negligible. The distance between any two given points on a rigid body remains constant in time regardless of external forces or moments exerted on it. A rigid body is usually considered as a continuous distribution of mass. In the study of special relativity, a perfectly rigid body does not exist; and objects can only be assumed to be rigid if they are not moving near the speed of light.
