Moment (physics)


In physics, a moment is an expression involving the product of a distance and physical quantity, and in this way it accounts for how the physical quantity is located or arranged.
Moments are usually defined with respect to a fixed reference point; they deal with physical quantities located at some distance relative to that reference point. For example, the moment of force, often called torque, is the product of a force on an object and the distance from the reference point to the object. In principle, any physical quantity can be multiplied by a distance to produce a moment. Commonly used quantities include forces, masses, and electric charge distributions.

Elaboration

In its most simple and basic form, a moment is the product of the distance to some point, raised to some power, and some physical quantity such as the force, charge, etc. at that point:
where is the physical quantity such as a force applied at a point, or a point charge, or a point mass, etc. If the quantity is not concentrated solely at a single point, the moment is the integral of that quantity's density over space:
where is the distribution of the density of charge, mass, or whatever quantity is being considered.
More complex forms take into account the angular relationships between the distance and the physical quantity, but the above equations capture the essential feature of a moment, namely the existence of an underlying or equivalent term. This implies that there are multiple moments and that the moment generally depends on the reference point from which the distance is measured, although for certain moments this dependence vanishes and the moment becomes independent of the reference point.
Each value of n corresponds to a different moment: the 1st moment corresponds to n = 1; the 2nd moment to n = 2, etc. The 0th moment is sometimes called the monopole moment; the 1st moment is sometimes called the dipole moment, and the 2nd moment is sometimes called the quadrupole moment, especially in the context of electric charge distributions.

Examples

Moments of mass:
Assuming a density function that is finite and localized to a particular region, outside that region a 1/r potential may be expressed as a series of spherical harmonics:
The coefficients are known as multipole moments, and take the form:
where expressed in spherical coordinates
is a variable of integration. A more complete
treatment may be found in pages describing multipole expansion or
spherical multipole moments.
When represents an electric charge density, the are, in a sense, projections of the moments of electric charge: is the monopole moment; the are projections of the dipole moment, the are projections of the quadrupole moment, etc.

Applications of multipole moments

The multipole expansion applies to 1/r scalar potentials, examples of which include the electric potential and the gravitational potential. For these potentials, the expression can be used to approximate the strength of a field produced by a localized distribution of charges by calculating the first few moments. For sufficiently large r, a reasonable approximation can be obtained from just the monopole and dipole moments. Higher fidelity can be achieved by calculating higher order moments. Extensions of the technique can be used to calculate interaction energies and intermolecular forces.
The technique can also be used to determine the properties of an unknown distribution. Measurements pertaining to multipole moments may be taken and used to infer properties of the underlying distribution. This technique applies to small objects such as molecules,
but has also been applied to the universe itself, being for example the technique employed by the WMAP and Planck experiments to analyze the cosmic microwave background radiation.

History

The concept of moment in physics is derived from the mathematical concept of moments. The principle of moments is derived from Archimedes' discovery of the operating principle of the lever. In the lever one applies a force, in his day most often human muscle, to an arm, a beam of some sort. Archimedes noted that the amount of force applied to the object, the moment of force, is defined as M = rF, where F is the applied force, and r is the distance from the applied force to object. However, historical evolution of the term 'moment' and its use in different branches of science, such as mathematics, physics and engineering, is unclear.
Federico Commandino, in 1565, translated into Latin from Archimedes:
This was apparently the first use of the word moment in the sense which we now know it: a moment about a center of rotation.