Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Irodov Problem 1.144





















The figure beside shows the path of m2. Basically the paths of the two particles will be such that the center of mass O remains fixed. The center of mass of the two particles is given by,
.



The above equation indicates that if we drew a line segment connecting the two masses at any time the line segment will be divided in the ratio of the inverse of the masses as shown in the figure.