Balancing Bottle | Fun with Centre of Mass | English

Why do objects fall down when held in slant position with respect to the surface? How do you balance a wooden plant that is in slant position? Can you use a bottle to balance it? Learn about the concept of Centre of mass in this fun science video.

Every solid object has a centre of mass. For an object to stand up straight and not topple over, the perpendicular drawn from the centre of mass should lie within the base of the object. This experiment shows how a wooden plank is unable to stand straight as its centre of mass is located out of its base.

When you attach a bottle to the plank, the centre of mass of wooden plank or the bottle is out of the base, but that of the combined system is situated inside the base. This results into the bottle being balanced properly without anything toppling over.

You can try different angles of the plank and different weight/length of the bottles to see this effect in action. Each system will have a different centre of mass and will either stand up or topple over. This can also be used to make cool looking bottle stand where bottle looks like its hanging in mid-air.

Hope you learned something new today and understood how the centre of mass plays a crucial role in balancing objects. For more exciting experiments about math’s and science subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Thank you!

Production team: Ashok Rupner, Chaitanya Mungi, Shraddha Bhurkunde, Neha Apte
Prof. B. D. Chakradeo, Mukund Mehendale, Yash Bharambe,
Camera: Vivek Kannadi, Parmeshwar Singh Yadav Music: Dr. Manasi Kulkarni

This concept is covered in SSC Science and Technology Part 1 textbook, Chapter 1: Gravitation, Page no. 5.