Degrees of freedom (mechanics) has only one degree of freedom because the positions of the cars behind the engine are constrained by the shape of the track. An automobile with highly stiff suspension can be considered to be a rigid body traveling on a plane (a flat, two-dimensional space). This body has three independent degrees of freedom consisting of two components of translation and one angle of rotation. Skidding or drifting is a good example of an automobile's three independent degrees of freedom. The position and orientation of a rigid body in space is defined by three components of translation and three components of
Space (mathematics) projective geometry nor defined from the notions mentioned there. The question "what is the sum of the three angles of a triangle" is meaningful in Euclidean geometry but meaningless in projective geometry. A different situation appeared in the 19th century: in some geometries the sum of the three angles of a triangle is well-defined but different from the classical value (180 degrees). Non-Euclidean hyperbolic geometry, introduced by Nikolai Lobachevsky in 1829 and János Bolyai in 1832 (and Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1816, unpublished) stated that the sum depends on the triangle and is always less than 180 degrees. Eugenio Beltrami