Eli5: when you “lower the center of gravity” on something ( car, or whatever) does it actually have anything to do with gravity?

Question

Eli5: when you “lower the center of gravity” on something ( car, or whatever) does it actually have anything to do with gravity?

In: Physics

Answer 1

It does have something to do with gravity. When gravity is uniform is is equal to the center of mass of an object, on earth gravity is close enough to uniform for almost everything

For a lot of stability and other considerations, you can imagine an object’s mass is in that location.

Look at this image [https://media.ed.science.psu.edu/h5p/embed/4474?entity_iframe=1](https://media.ed.science.psu.edu/h5p/embed/4474?entity_iframe=1) the dot is the center of mass of the object. It will fall over if the center of mass is outside the contact point on the surface. 1, 2 and 3 have the center of mass in the contact point and will not fall over but 3 have it outside and will fall over.

3 would be a car with a high center of gravity and 4 with a low center of gravity. How well a car handles a tight is similar to the box above on the inclined plane. The car will tip over easier if the center of mass it higher.