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center of mass (Definition)

The center of mass (en: centre of mass) of an object is a point in physical pace where, for computational purposes in theoretical mechanics, the mass of the object can be considered to be concentrated. This concept is most often used for rigid bodies, but applies to any macroscopic arrangement of matter. The centre of mass can be used as a geometrical concept that allows in several ways to simplify an apparently complicated system or problem by treating an entire rigid body as a “point particle”. For example, a rigid body hung from a string in a uniform gravitational field will have its centre of mass straight below the string if it is at rest. More generally, as long as the only forces acting are gravity and the tension in the string, in order to compute the motion of the object in space (disregarding possible rotations) one can conceptually replace the solid object by a point particle located at the object's centre of mass.

The momentum of an object with total mass $M$ is

$\displaystyle \mathbf{p}=M\mathbf{v}_{\mathrm{cm}}, $
and if a total force $\mathbf{F}$ acts on the object, Newton's second law may be formulated as

$\displaystyle \mathbf{F}=M\mathbf{a}_{\mathrm{cm}}. $
In these equations $\mathbf{v}_{\mathrm{cm}}$ and $\mathbf{a}_{\mathrm{cm}}$ are the velocity and the acceleration of its centre of mass, respectively; these are defined below.

The centre of mass of a solid object, rigid body, etc., occupying a region $V$ in space, is defined as the average position of all the points of $V$, each point $\mathbf{x}$ being weighted with the density of the object at that point, $\rho(\mathbf{x})$. This average is a volume integral over the region $V$:

$\displaystyle \mathbf{x}_{\mathrm{cm}}\equiv\frac{1}{M}\int_V \rho(\mathbf{x})\mathbf{x}\,\mathrm{d}V. $
Here $M$ is the total mass of the object:

$\displaystyle M\equiv\int_V \rho(\mathbf{x})\,\mathrm{d}V. $

If the object consists of a number of point particles, these integrals become sums over the particles. The centre of mass of a collection of $N$ particles with masses $m_1,m_2,\ldots,m_N$ located at the positions $\mathbf{x}_1,\mathbf{x}_2,\ldots,\mathbf{x}_N$ is

$\displaystyle \mathbf{x}_{\mathrm{cm}}\equiv\frac{1}{M}\sum_{i=1}^N m_i\mathbf{x}_i, $
where $M$ is now the sum of the masses of the particles:

$\displaystyle M\equiv\sum_{i=1}^N m_i. $

The velocity and acceleration of the centre of mass are now simply defined as the first and second time derivatives of $\mathbf{x}_{\mathrm{cm}}$:

$\displaystyle \mathbf{v}_{\mathrm{cm}}\equiv\mathbf{\dot x}_{\mathrm{cm}},\qquad \mathbf{a}_{\mathrm{cm}}\equiv\mathbf{\ddot x}_{\mathrm{cm}}. $



"center of mass" is owned by bci1. [ full author list (2) | owner history (1) ]

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See Also: motion of the center of mass, centre of mass of polygon, momentum

Other names:  centre of mass
Also defines:  rigid body, solid object, point particle, center of mass integrals, center of mass velocity, center of mass acceleration, center of gravity

Attachments:
center of mass examples (Example) by bloftin
center of mass of half-disc (Example) by pahio

Cross-references: volume, position, acceleration, velocity, momentum, motion, field, system, concept, mass, mechanics, object
There are 27 references to this object.

This is version 12 of center of mass, born on 2005-08-31, modified 2009-06-12.
Object id is 96, canonical name is CentreOfMass.
Accessed 5152 times total.

Classification:
Physics Classification: 45.40.-f (Dynamics and kinematics of rigid bodies)
 45.50.Dd (General motion)
 02.40.Yy (Geometric mechanics )
Pending Errata and Addenda
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