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Precession vs Nutation - What's the difference?

precession | nutation |

As nouns the difference between precession and nutation

is that precession is precedence while nutation is a bobbing motion that accompanies the precession of a spinning rigid body.

precession

English

Alternative forms

* (obsolete)

Noun

  • (uncountable) precedence
  • * ''But as it will not do to talk entirely at random, as Montaigne does, and Ralph Waldo Emerson tries to do, we must take up some little thread or threads. and string our thoughts thereupon, keeping up also a relation among them of precession and succession.
  • (physics, countable) The wobbling motion of the axis of a spinning body when there is an external force acting on the axis.
  • (astronomy, uncountable) The slow gyration of the earth’s axis around the pole of the ecliptic, caused mainly by the gravitational torque of the sun and moon.
  • Any of several slow changes in an astronomical body's rotational or orbital parameters.

    • Derived terms

    * Larmor precession * precession of the equinoxes * precession of the ecliptic * axial precession *

    Related terms

    * precess

    Anagrams

    * *

    nutation

    English

    (wikipedia nutation)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (physics) a bobbing motion that accompanies the precession of a spinning rigid body
  • a nodding motion (of the head etc.)
  • (astronomy) any of several irregularities in the precession of the equinoxes caused by varying torque applied to the Earth by the Sun and the Moon
  • (botany) the circular motion of the tip of a growing shoot

    • Related terms

    * circumnutation * counternutation * nutate