- #1
hotcommodity
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So I was laying in bed last night, and I was thinking about why a top-heavy object is easier to tip than an object with its center of mass lower to the ground. I couldn't come up with the main physics concept that would explain this behavior.
Take a truck banking a turn for instance. If you think of its wheels as a pivot, and consider its center of mass to be at the top of the truck, you could consider the potential for the truck to accelerate angularly about its tires (the pivot). But the further the center of mass is from the pivot, the harder it becomes to accelerate the truck about its pivot, that is, the harder it becomes to apply a torque to it as its rotational inertia increases. Am I thinking about the rotation of the object improperly, or should another concept be applied to explain this behavior?
Take a truck banking a turn for instance. If you think of its wheels as a pivot, and consider its center of mass to be at the top of the truck, you could consider the potential for the truck to accelerate angularly about its tires (the pivot). But the further the center of mass is from the pivot, the harder it becomes to accelerate the truck about its pivot, that is, the harder it becomes to apply a torque to it as its rotational inertia increases. Am I thinking about the rotation of the object improperly, or should another concept be applied to explain this behavior?