This simple diagram attempts to show how centre of mass affects my stability while standing on one leg. The white arrows show centres of mass of my bag and body while the reds show roughly the pivot that is my leg.With centres of mass on either side of the pivot, moments are equal enough for me to stand easily. Switching the bag to the other side along with its centre of mass causes more moments clockwise causing me to lamely fall over. This could also show Moments of Inertia in that I instinctively tried to raise my arms to keep the balance, this put the mass of my arm at a larger radius from the pivot (or axis if that helps you to think about it) thus increasing the moments of inertia and decreasing angular acceleration.
Actually, I'm sure there're some important areas I havent thought about here, if anyone has any suggestions, there's plenty of comment space below. Postpostpost.
Photo by Martin Phipps, March 09
Post by Tom Corbett
Interesting study on centre of gravity,tho it would have been nice if you could take the experiments to further extremes, so u'd get a beter variation, nontheless; concise, creative idea n im lovin the use of addtional graphics, to illustrate your point.
ReplyDeleteKrishan Meetoo