I think eulerddx4's confusion is pretty understandable, and most of you really aren't helping by acting like the answer to his problem is so obvious.
So I'm going to try to actually help him out, please correct me if I make any mistakes...The term "net force" has to do with what you make your...
The textbook says the same thing that wikipedia says here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_mass
In the section that says "analogue to Newton's second law..."
Yes, that's what I'm saying. The acceleration of the center of mass of the body will be lower. So I still don't understand the equation in my textbook, which says Fext = Mtotal *Acm. Like you said, if I apply the same force to the center of mass I will get a lower acceleration. However, I still...
I don't understand. I suspend a rod by a string at its center of mass, then I apply a force perpendicular to the string at the rod's center of mass. The CM would accelerate in the motion of a pendulum. What do you mean by "couldn't happen to be accelerated"?
xts: I haven't made calculations, it's just intuition. It seems obvious. Is that statement incorrect? Imagine trying to pull a heavy object with a rope. You would want the center of mass to be in line with the rope, because otherwise the force you apply would spin the object rather than...
I am a bit confused about a statement I read in my textbook saying the sum of external forces on a body is equal to the body's mass times the acceleration of it's center of mass. It seems to me if a long rod is suspended in the air by a string at its center of mass, and I tap the rod near one of...