- #1
Sinister
- 33
- 0
Homework Statement
I'm doing my lab and my TA didn't really explain how we obtain the centre of mass.
Basically the lab is you have a ruler and you make it horizontal and measure the force along it using a scale (obviously in Newtons)...
So you measure the distance of the force from the pivot point to the scale and then I calculated the torque ( F x D).. we did this 3 times each with a different value of D and got 3 different torque values... This part of the lab was to determine where the centre of gravity is for the rule. oh and the mass of the rule is 219.6 grams. So I'm confused how we calculate this?
Homework Equations
The torque of gravity is Tg= mg x Xcm where Xcm is the distance to the centre of mass
2) T= F x D Force from the scale times the distance from the pivot point
The Attempt at a Solution
1) first I found the torque exerted by the ruler which was T = F x D
Then I found the torque of gravity... But I do not know how to calculate the centre of mass