In the paper we compare the geometric descriptions of the deformed sphere (i.e., the so-called λ-sphere) and the standard spheroid (namely, World Geodetic System 1984’s reference ellipsoid of revolution). Among the main geometric characteristics of those two surfaces of revolution embedded into the three-dimensional Euclidean space we consider the semi-major (equatorial) and semi-minor (polar) axes, quartermeridian length, surface area, volume, sphericity index, and tipping (bifurcation) point for geodesics. Next, the RMS (Root Mean Square) error is defined as the square-rooted arithmetic mean of the squared relative errors for the individual pairs of the discussed six main geometric characteristics. As a result of the process of minimization of the RMS error, we have obtained the proposition of the optimized value of the deformation parameter of the λ-sphere, for which we have calculated the absolute and relative errors for the individual pairs of the discussed main geometric characteristics of λ-sphere and standard spheroid (the relative errors are of the order of 10−6 – 10−9). Among others, it turns out that the value of the,sup> ^{flattening factor of the spheroid is quite a good approximation for the corresponding value of the deformation parameter of the λ-sphere (the relative error is of the order of 10−4).}

In this paper we explore the mechanics of infinitesimal gyroscopes (test bodies with internal degrees of freedom) moving on an arbitrary member of the helicoid-catenoid family of minimal surfaces. As the configurational spaces within this family are far from being trivial manifolds, the problem of finding the geodesic and geodetic motions presents a real challenge. We have succeeded in finding the solutions to those motions in an explicit parametric form. It is shown that in both cases the solutions can be expressed through the elliptic integrals and elliptic functions, but in the geodetic case some appropriately chosen compatibility conditions for glueing together different branches of the solution are needed. Additionally, an action-angle analysis of the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi equations is performed for external potentials that are well-suited to the geometry of the problem under consideration. As a result, five different sets of conditions between the three action variables and the total energy of the infinitesimal gyroscopes are obtained.