Center of Mass

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Claimed by Alex Huynh (ahuynh9)

The Main Idea

The center of mass of an object is the point in space where if a force was applied, the object moves according to Newton's laws without rotation. At the center of mass, the distribution of mass is balanced, and the average of the weighted position coordinates of the distributed mass defines its coordinates. Mechanical calculations are often simplified with respect to the center of mass of objects.


A Mathematical Model

The position of the center of mass of an object can be found by summating the product of each point mass and its relative linear position and dividing by the sum by the total mass.

This equation can then be extended to three dimensions.

A Computational Model

How do we visualize or predict using this topic. Consider embedding some vpython code here Teach hands-on with GlowScript

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