Baton Example for a System of Particles

To find our Center of Mass, we set up a coordinate system in the horizontal plane. Particle 1 will be our less massive knob at the end of the baton and Particle 2 will be our more massive know at the other end of our baton.

Vectors and represent the position of and .

Broken up into and :

We can then find the velocity and acceleration using the center of mass:

Where and is force on and due to the rod. Through this process, we can get more information about the baton and how it moves.