Proceedings of the Celestial Mechanics Conference: The effects of imperfect elasticity in problems of celestial mechanics

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Abstract
. The theory presented in this paper was developed in an attempt to account for the observational fact that asteroids have singly-periodic light curves. It is first shown that dissipative forces which decrease the kinetic energy of a rotating body without affecting its angular momentum will ultimately bring the axis of rotation into coincidence with the axis about which the moment of inertia is greatest. The mechanism of dissipation which is considered is internal friction. The computed rate of decrease of the angle between the axis of rotation and the principal axis of inertia seems to be compatible with the observational evidence.

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