Science Memes

12651 readers

4058 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

105

mass (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 142 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Obviously the left one.

In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space is the unique point at any given time where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. For a rigid body containing its center of mass, this is the point to which a force may be applied to cause a linear acceleration without an angular acceleration.

If they wanted this to be an actual, debatable question, they shouldn't have used 'center of mass', as the term has a specific definition and the question has a correct answer; it's not open to interpretation, like "How would a horse wear pants?" or similar questions.

[–] olafurp 7 points 1 day ago

Choosing the other one would be known as "rimming"

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't think it was meant to be taken seriously, but these are the types of comments I was hoping for. ;)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

The most fun thing about this community is responding with serious answers to memes that were intended to be jokes. :)

[–] Bell 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Wait is this an African horse or a European one?

[–] DonGirses 14 points 1 day ago

I don't know...

AAAAH

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

Fully laden or unladen?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

What you don't know is that the mass distribution is extremely uneven as there's a lead ball in the back half (for sweetness), and yeasty air bubbles in the front half.

[–] Contramuffin 2 points 1 day ago

If a donut were to have a center of mass, would the center of mass be like this or like this?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Would you mind sharing the source of that quote? I’m curious about the ‘relative position […] sums to zero’—relative to what? Suppose the mass is completely contained in the ‘upper right quadrant’ in 3D space (I’m lacking the language skill to express that accurately). Then I can’t find a definition that wouldn’t cause the sum to be positive.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I just grabbed it from Wikipedia, so it's likely written to be understandable to a layman (which is good, because that's what I am).

That said, it's just referring to the mass relative to the point you're declaring the center of mass. If there's 15g on the left, there should be 15g on the right; think of it like the center of mass being (0,0,0) on a 3 dimensional graph. 15g on one side is "negative" and on the other is "positive", so the sum at the (0,0,0) point is 0g.