KNPE 153 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Moodle, Ground Reaction Force, Free Body Diagram

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Kinesiology
• Course: KNPE 153
• Professor: Pat Costigan

Document Summary

In some cases we can represent an object as a single point in space. When we do this, we identify the point on the object that best represents the o(cid:271)je(cid:272)t"s total mass - this point is the center of mass. P(cid:396)e(cid:448)iously (cid:449)e lea(cid:396)(cid:374)ed that a fo(cid:396)(cid:272)e that passes th(cid:396)ough a(cid:374) o(cid:271)je(cid:272)t"s (cid:272)e(cid:374)te(cid:396) of (cid:373)ass (cid:272)auses li(cid:374)ea(cid:396) (cid:373)otio(cid:374) only it does not cause rotation. Consider this situation (a force causing only translation) but instead of pushing the object we apply a force to lift it off the ground. The force causes the object to lift but, since there is only linear movement, there will be no rotation, therefore, the location at which you applied the force is the point about which the object is balanced. So the center of mass is the point at which the mass is concentrated and the point about which an object is balanced.