Motion of the center of mass

This simulation illustrates the power of the concept of the center of mass - different points on an object follow complicated paths as the object flies through the air, but the object's center of mass follows a simple parabolic trajectory, the same path a ball would follow.

Simulation first posted on 7-13-2016. Written by Andrew Duffy

Creative Commons License
This work by Andrew Duffy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This simulation can be found in the collection at http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/classroom.html.

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