ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Rotating spheres

Hey, kiddo! Do you like playing with balls? Great! Let's talk about rotating spheres!

So, a sphere is a fancy word for a ball that looks perfectly round. Imagine holding a big, colorful ball in your hands. You can spin it around, right? Well, that's what rotating a sphere means – making it spin around an imaginary line called an axis.

Now, imagine drawing a line through the center of the ball – that's the axis we talked about earlier. If we spin the ball around that line, it is like the ball rolls around with that line in the middle. How fast the ball spins around that line is called the angular velocity, which shows how much it rotates in a unit of time, like how many turns it makes in one minute.

But, spinning the sphere doesn't only make it look interesting. It can also affect how other things around it behave. For example, if you attach a smaller ball to the larger one, and spin the larger ball, both balls start rotating around the same axis. The smaller ball also gets to be a part of the larger ball’s dance, creating a unique pattern. This is called rotational motion.

Rotating spheres can have different effects, too. For example, consider Earth rotating around its axis every 24 hours. This creates day and night, and determines our waking up and sleeping time, among other things.

So, there you have it! Rotating spheres are just like spinning balls, but they can have different effects depending on what they are made of and how they spin!