Abstract
THE principal object of the following paper is to suggest the use of a more general form than is commonly employed in the statement of some of the more important theorems of elementary mechanics. Such a generalisation, if in itself satisfactory, has two-fold advantages; it both facilitates the direct solution of problems otherwise apparently complex, and it enables a common method to be employed in an infinite variety of cases, each of which otherwise has to be treated in its own special way. The methods to be described are purely geometric, and admit in all cases of graphic solutions. In the study of mechanism and in all applications of mechanics to engineering work this is a matter of considerable importance, for graphic methods have such enormous advantages in these cases that they must supplant all others when they give equally good results.
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Centroids and Their Application to Some Mechanical Problems 1 . Nature 16, 48–49 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/016048b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/016048b0