Ignorable Coordinate
ignorable coordinate
[ig′nȯr·ə·bəl kō′ȯrd·ən·ət] (mechanics)
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Ignorable Coordinate
a generalized coordinate of a mechanical system that does not appear in the system’s Lagrangian function or other characteristic functions. The presence of ignorable coordinates simplifies the integration of the corresponding differential equations of motion of a mechanical system. For example, if the coordinate q1, does not appear in the Lagrangian function L, the Lagrange equation
takes the form
and immediately yields the integral
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.