A torque-free rigid body has constant angular momentum in inertial space. Its angular velocity need not be parallel to , because . In body principal axes, Euler equations for a torque-free rigid body are
For a symmetric top , , the component is constant and
This is the signed rotation frequency of the transverse angular-velocity components in the body frame. In space the symmetry axis instead obeys
Its angle to is constant, with . The body-frame and space-frame frequencies of free symmetric-top precession describe different frames. A spherical body has and no corresponding wobble. For a triaxial body, rotations about the largest and smallest principal-inertia axes are stable, whereas rotation about the intermediate axis is unstable.[ref]