
Second, we know that we should push perpendicular to the plane of the door if we push parallel to the plane of the door, we are not able to rotate it.

First, we know that a door opens slowly if we push too close to its hinges it is more efficient to rotate a door open if we push far from the hinges. Consider, for example, how we rotate a door to open it. In everyday life, we rotate objects about an axis all the time, so intuitively we already know much about torque. We call this rotational counterpart torque. Since forces change the translational motion of objects, the rotational counterpart must be related to changing the rotational motion of an object about an axis. Let’s consider what the counterpart to force must be. So far we have defined many variables that are rotational equivalents to their translational counterparts. In this section, we define torque and make an argument for the equation for calculating torque for a rigid body with fixed-axis rotation. Or every time we move our bodies from a standing position, we apply a torque to our limbs. Torque is at work in unseen ways, as when we press on the accelerator in a car, causing the engine to put additional torque on the drive train. We all have an intuition about torque, as when we use a large wrench to unscrew a stubborn bolt. We see the application of torque in many ways in our world.

Calculate individual torques about a common axis and sum them to find the net torqueĪn important quantity for describing the dynamics of a rotating rigid body is torque.Determine the sign (positive or negative) of a torque using the right-hand rule.

