Math Is Fun Forum

mikau

Member

Registered: 2005-08-22

Posts: 1,504

y center of gravity?

My book spent a few minutes explaining how to find the x center of gravity for a system of particles in which the gravity differs for each particle, (rather, it differs based on the height of each particle)

But they soon give me a homework problem and ask me to find both the x and y coordinates of the center of gravity. But they said nothing about how to do it in the y direction.

I tried to apply the same reasoning, but they defined the center of gravity as follows:

The gravitational force Fg on a body effectively acts at a signle point called the center of gravity of the body.

In the x direction they use the torques associated with the gravity to determine this, but in the y direction there are no torques.

I thought about rotating the system 90 degrees and then determining the center of gravity in the x direction, however, the gravity values differ with height, so i'm not sure at what height to place the system after rotating.

Any ideas?

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A logarithm is just a misspelled algorithm.

mleiner

Member

Registered: 2008-04-02

Posts: 2

Re: y center of gravity?

fg = m x g in the y direction.. unless i'm wrong idk