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ShamelessGit
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Homework Statement
I want to derive the centrifugal and Coriolis forces with the Lagrangian for rotating space. The speed of an object for an outside observer is dr/dt + w x r, where r are the moving coordinates. So m/2(dr/dt + w x r)^2 is the Lagrangian.
The Attempt at a Solution
Everything above makes intuitive sense to me. The problem is that I don't know how to use the chain rule on the w x r.
When I derive it by dr/dt and then by d/dt I get m(d^2r/dt^2 + w x dr/dt), which is what I'm supposed to get.
But when I do it by d/dr I just cannot get what I'm supposed to. I looked all over the internet and I can't find the chain rule for cross products and I've played with it for a long time and it just doesn't work.
Please help.