Thinking about center of mass As a kid, I would sit in class and balance my pencil on my finger. What I didn't know then was that I was finding the pencil's center of mass. An object's center of mass is a point where the average weight of the object lies. In other words, the weighted position vectors of the object at this point sum to zero (source: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/center-of-mass ). The exact location of this point can be found using calculus. First, it is important to understand the moment . The moment for a two-dimensional object is given with respect to both the x- and y-axes. It is a physical characteristic of the object a certain distance from these axes. It's easiest to think about the axes as reference points for where the characteristic acts; in this case, where the mass is distributed. When computing these moments, the hardest concept to grasp is that the moment with respect to y, for example, is given by the x-coordinat...
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