Historical Connections
Gravity and balance are the key to the entire balancing forks project. A body's center of gravity is the point around which the resultant torque due to gravity forces vanishes. Balance on the other hand comes to be viewed as something aggregate product of systematic activity. Previously it had been viewed as a precondition of existence. In conclusion, where a gravity field can be considered to be uniform, the mass-center and the center-of-gravity will be the same, that is when balancing comes in the act and makes the forks the center of gravity. Both balancing and center-of-gravity are the entire reason the forks look like they're hanging mid air. The history behind the center of gravity/center of mass was first introduced by the ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, and engineer Archimedes of Syracuse. Archimedes showed that torque exerted on a lever by weights resting at various points along the lever is the same as what it would be if all weights were moved to a single point-their center of gravity. He demonstrated that the orientation of a floating object is the one that makes its center of gravity as low as possible. He developed mathematical techniques for finding the center of gravity/center of mass of objects of uniform density of various well-defined shapes, in particular a triangle, a hemisphere, and a frustum of a circular paraboloid. In the middle ages, theories on the center of gravity/center of mass were further developed by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, al-Razi, Omar Khayyám, and al-Khazini. Center of mass in physics is the quantity of matter in a body regardless of its volume or of any forces acting on it. The center of mass is a function of only the positions and masses of the particles that make up the system. In the context of an entirely uniform gravitational field, the center of mass is often called the center of gravity too, which we mentioned in the beginning. Center of mass is another huge thing that is the entire reason behind this project. Most people think that the center of mass is inside of an object, but it doesn't necessarily have to be inside the object. That takes us back to balancing forks, when we took the two forks and wedge the tines together the center of mass of the forks is located in between the two forks.