Center of Mass of a Thin Plate

by Erik Yo

Submitted : Spring 2011

The purpose of this project was to find the center of mass (or centroid) of a thin plate of arbitrary shape through experimentation and calculation. The experimental portion required a plumb line to be suspended somewhere along the edges of the thin plates from two different points. The intersection points between the lines that were drawn would be the location of the center of mass that was obtained through this experimentation. The center of mass was then obtained through calculation using concepts of calculus. The results from the calculation were then compared to the experimental results of the center of mass. The calculated and experimental center of masses differed somewhat due to several factors such as human error and other inaccuracies. Problems such as these are what most likely replaced the use of devices such as plum lines with computer programs.

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