The Innovation and Practice in Teaching the Moment of Inertia Tensor

Tensors are a very important concept in theoretical physics. The inertia tensor is the first concept of tensors that students encounter in undergraduate courses. This paper attempts to innovate the teaching content of the inertia tensor by reorganizing the teaching content of the inertia tensor of rigid bodies. It starts with calculating the angular momentum of a rigid body rotating about a fixed point, then introduces the matrix form, and finally introduces the concept of the inertia tensor, dyadic notation, and their calculation rules. This approach helps students understand that the introduction of tensors is natural and is just a mathematical form of problem description, but it brings convenience. Using this as a starting point, it lays a solid foundation for students' subsequent learning of theories involving tensors and also cultivates their innovative thinking.