Center of mass with no external force


Mass of the person
30 kg 90 kg
90
Mass of the canoe
30 kg 90 kg
30

The simulation shows a person (in black) standing at the left end of a 2.4-meter-long red boat. The person then moves to the right end of the boat - how far does the boat move? This depends on how the masses of the person and the boat compare. The circles in the water are not life preservers, but instead mark the horizontal positions of the center of mass of the person, the person-boat system, and the boat.

Simulation first posted on 7-26-2016. 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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