Projectile Motion of a Two-Ball Object

In this video, you can see a rigid body, formed by joining two balls, being thrown across the screen. Tracing the trajectory of either ball shows a complicated path. On the other hand, the trajectory of the CM is the familiar parabolic arc of a projectile motion. This shows that an object’s motion can be treated as a translational motion of the CM juxtaposed with a rotational motion about its CM.

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