Center of Human Masses

Last week Friday after school, my friends and I were chilling at our benches in Weinberg. For some reason, Misha, Meatloaf (Jared), Dae (Jon), and me decided to try and see how good we could get at balancing on each other. After a few epic fails, Misha would jump on Meatloaf and I would jump on Misha and none of us would tip over. It was pretty fun. I was pretty surprised that Meatloaf was able to sustain roughly 250 pounds on his back without dying (although, judging by his facial expression in the picture, he came rather close). I then remembered learning about center of mass in physics (actually, I was absent that day). The center of mass of an object is the point at which there is an equal amount of mass on either side such that the object is at equilibrium. Looking at the picture, the center of mass on the x-axis was probably just to the right of Misha's shoulders. If you look down in the picture from that point, it is right near Meatloaf's feet. This means that the equilibrium point was just over a stable point that was supporting all of us. This explains why we did not tip over since the balance point of the three of us was being directly supported by Meatloaf's legs and feet. (Photo credit: Bree Chun)