Solution to 2008 Problem 83


Hamilton's equations are
\begin{align*}\dot{\theta} &= \frac{\partial H}{\partial p_{\theta}} \\\dot{p}_{\theta} &= -\frac{\partial H}{\partia...
H does not depend on \phi, so the last equation implies that
\begin{align*}\dot{p}_{\phi} = 0\end{align*}
or
\begin{align*}p_{\phi} = \text{const}\end{align*}
Therefore, answer (E) is correct.


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