10 Rotation in three dimensions

In ballistics and flight dynamics, axes conventions are standardized ways of establishing the location and orientation of coordinate axes for use as a frame of reference. Mobile objects are normally tracked from an external frame considered fixed. Other frames can be defined on those mobile objects to deal with relative positions for other objects. Finally, attitudes or orientations can be described by a relationship between the external frame and the one defined over the mobile object.

In mathematics, the axis–angle representation of a rotation parameterizes a rotation in a three-dimensional Euclidean space by two quantities: a unit vector e indicating the direction of an axis of rotation, and an angle θ describing the magnitude of the rotation about the axis. Only two numbers, not three, are needed to define the direction of a unit vector e rooted at the origin because the magnitude of e is constrained. For example, the elevation and azimuth angles of e suffice to locate it in any particular Cartesian coordinate frame.

In kinematics, Chasles' theorem, or Mozzi–Chasles' theorem, says that the most general rigid body displacement can be produced by a translation along a line followed by a rotation about an axis colinear to that line.

The Euler angles are three angles introduced by Leonhard Euler to describe the orientation of a rigid body with respect to a fixed coordinate system.

In geometry, Euler's rotation theorem states that, in three-dimensional space, any displacement of a rigid body such that a point on the rigid body remains fixed, is equivalent to a single rotation about some axis that runs through the fixed point. It also means that the composition of two rotations is also a rotation. Therefore the set of rotations has a group structure, known as a rotation group.

Gimbal lock is the loss of one degree of freedom in a three-dimensional, three-gimbal mechanism that occurs when the axes of two of the three gimbals are driven into a parallel configuration, "locking" the system into rotation in a degenerate two-dimensional space.

Nutation is a rocking, swaying, or nodding motion in the axis of rotation of a largely axially symmetric object, such as a gyroscope, planet, or bullet in flight, or as an intended behaviour of a mechanism. In an appropriate reference frame it can be defined as a change in the second Euler angle. If it is not caused by forces external to the body, it is called free nutation or Euler nutation. A pure nutation is a movement of a rotational axis such that the first Euler angle is constant. In spacecraft dynamics, precession is sometimes referred to as nutation.

In geometry, the orientation, angular position, attitude, or direction of an object such as a line, plane or rigid body is part of the description of how it is placed in the space it occupies. More specifically, it refers to the imaginary rotation that is needed to move the object from a reference placement to its current placement. A rotation may not be enough to reach the current placement. It may be necessary to add an imaginary translation, called the object's location. The location and orientation together fully describe how the object is placed in space. The above-mentioned imaginary rotation and translation may be thought to occur in any order, as the orientation of an object does not change when it translates, and its location does not change when it rotates.

In quantum mechanics, spin is an intrinsic property of all elementary particles. All known fermions, the particles that constitute ordinary matter, have a spin of ½. The spin number describes how many symmetrical facets a particle has in one full rotation; a spin of ½ means that the particle must be fully rotated twice before it has the same configuration as when it started.

In geometry and physics, spinors are elements of a complex vector space that can be associated with Euclidean space. Like geometric vectors and more general tensors, spinors transform linearly when the Euclidean space is subjected to a slight (infinitesimal) rotation. However, when a sequence of such small rotations is composed (integrated) to form an overall final rotation, the resulting spinor transformation depends on which sequence of small rotations was used. Unlike vectors and tensors, a spinor transforms to its negative when the space is continuously rotated through a complete turn from 0° to 360°. This property characterizes spinors: spinors can be viewed as the "square roots" of vectors.