Chaplygin sleigh.

About Chaplygin sleigh

The Chaplygin sleigh is a simple pedagogical example of a nonholonomic system in mechanics, described by Sergey Chaplygin. It consists of a body that slides frictionlessly on a horizontal plane, with a knife edge that constrains its motion so that the knife slides only longitudinally. Because this constraint is nonholonomic, Liouville's theorem does not apply, and although energy is conserved, the motion is dissipative in the sense that phase-space volume is not conserved. The motion is attracted to an equilibrium, in which the sleigh moves without rotation, with the knife edge trailing the center of mass.