Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-options-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2012/h/h2/c/solution
Past exam of the options II course of the University of Oxford 2012 H H2 c Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
Write for position relative to the centroid. The inertia tensor there isIn particular its diagonal entries integrate the squares of distances from the corresponding axes, and its off-diagonal entries are the negative products of coordinates.
Insert into . The cross term vanishes because . Using givesIf is the vector from to , positions relative to are . Expanding the defining tensor integral with this substitution again removes the terms linear in . Thus the tensor parallel axis theorem isSince is fixed, , so . Substitution into the energy decomposition yields
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