Velocity the angular speed formula_27 and the magnitude of the displacement. such that Angular momentum in scalar form is the mass times the distance to the origin times the transverse velocity, or equivalently, the mass times the distance squared times the angular speed. The sign convention for angular momentum is the same as that for angular velocity. where The expression formula_33 is known as moment of inertia. If forces are in the radial direction only with an inverse square dependence, as in the case of a gravitational orbit, angular momentum is constant, and transverse speed is inversely proportional to the distance,
Cross product The cross product with n therefore describes the infinitesimal generator of the rotations about n. These infinitesimal generators form the Lie algebra so(3) of the rotation group SO(3), and we obtain the result that the Lie algebra R with cross product is isomorphic to the Lie algebra so(3). The vector cross product also can be expressed as the product of a skew-symmetric matrix and a vector: where superscript refers to the transpose operation, and [a] is defined by: The columns [a] of the skew-symmetric matrix for a vector a can be also obtained by calculating the cross product with unit