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I know that there are a lot of questions in just the title itself. I'd appreciate it , if you guys could answer for atleast one of them.

Here's the exact scenario that's running in my head.

imagine a drone is loosely tied to a pole and it's trying to move forward but instead, it ends up revolving around the pole. This seems to be a usual torque problem if we consider the displacement and the force vectors.

but there is also another vector over here. ie. the tension force.

the tension force is acting upon the drone exactly perpendicular to the tangential force. can we cross-product these two force vectors?

if yes, then what will the result vector be? is it torque and if it is torque is this the reason why the earth rotates while revolving around the sun?

if no, then why? and what is the condition to be considered before doing the cross product? why were we able to use the cross-product when it was displacement against force vectors and why are we not using the cross-product when its force against force?

kevin godfrey
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1 Answers1

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Yes, we can take the cross product of two vectors, nothing stops us. The question you are asking is like asking whether I can add any two real numbers, the answer to which is yes because real addition is an operation defined for two real numbers to give another real number. Similarly, cross product is an operation to give a vector from two any vectors. But we don’t take cross product of forces because it doesn’t yield a physical quantity of importance (as far as I know!).

EDIT to answer the edited question: No, the reason Earth rotates is not what you have suspected in the question. The sun is only responsible for the revolution of Earth. As for the rotation, it has to do with how things form in space (universe); the property of rotation comes about due to the way it is formed.

ModCon
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