PHYS 1003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Volume Integral, Classical Mechanics
17 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
Density is defined as the mass per unit volume. The si unit of density is kg/m^3. However, the non-si unit g/cm^3 is also commonly used in chemistry. The volume integral is a nested triple integral over all the space that the object occupies. See lecture notes for another example, involving the volume of a cylinder. Newtonian physics only applies to a single point in space. However, the objects we deal with are not actually single points, but groupings of atoms. The practical solution is to calculate a centre of mass , which is the point at which all of the mass is considered to reside. The following includes the formula to find the position for centre of mass. The choice of origin does not particularly matter, so pick an easy one (if one of the masses is at the origin, it makes the calculation easier)
