Balancing Act

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course Phy 231

3/18 5am

The balancing act exercise was a useful illustration of how simple the math involved in torque really is. After a few attempts on the game, it became second nature to double or halve the distance from the fulcrum based on double- or half-differences in mass.This definitely went against my original instincts about torque, but now that I've done the lab and worked through this game, it's hard to say why my intuitive sense of the principle was completely backward. (Also, I have children that I have tried to sit on a see-saw with, and it has always been obvious that I'm the one that needs to move closer to the center.)

Of course, it gets more complicated on higher levels, when the differences are other than 1:2. But with a little bit of thought, it's not difficult to imagine what mass would be required at each possible position on the opposite side in order to balance a given mass, and determine whether the actual position is closer or further from the fulcrum than it would need to be to do so.

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Very good.

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