You are holding a shopping basket at the grocery store with two 0.55-kg cartons of cereal at the left end of the basket. the basket is 0.78 m long. where should you place a 1.8-kg half gallon of milk, relative to the left end of the basket, so that the center of mass of your groceries is at the center of the basket?
The basket is represented by a weightless rigid beam of length 0.78 m. The x-coordinate is measured from the left end of the basket.
The mass at x=0 is 2*0.55 = 1.1 kg. The weight acting at x = 0 is W₁ = 1.1*9.8 = 10.78 N
The mass near the right end is 1.8 kg. Its weight is W₂ = 1.8*9.8 = 17.64 N
The fulcrum is in the middle of the basket, therefore its location is x = 0.78/2 = 0.39 m.
For equilibrium, the sum of moments about the fulcrum is zero. Therefore (10.78 N)*(0.39 m) - (17.64 N)*(x-0.39 m) = 0 4.2042 - 17.64x + 6.8796 = 0 -17.64x = -11.0838 x = 0.6283 m
