Re: Up Hill or Down

[David LeBlanc <dleblanc@mindspring.com>]

At 01:04 AM 1/11/00 EST, Tivers@aol.com wrote:
 
> He is not moving mass - he is moving his legs forward. >

>Legs with no mass. Interesting concept--indeed, a very complex calculus.

A pretty normal first-order assumption.  You don't seem to be following the
simplified version very well, so if we also added in a calculation for the
head and neck, as well as each segment of the limbs, it would get to be a
lot more difficult.  The assumption is that the center of gravity of the
entire horse isn't going to change substantially as the legs move.
Considering how little weight there is towards the ends of the legs, that's
a reasonable assumption. Probably gets you within 10%. I've done a lot of
calculations of mass centroids on some fairly complex objects, but that's
the next lesson.  It would also require calculus to do it properly on an
object as irregular as a horse.  First, let's see if we can start with
elementary mechanics, which means assuming a system that has one center of
mass.


David LeBlanc
dleblanc@mindspring.com


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