Moment of inertia is diagonal and torques around the axes act independently of each other. When a body is free to rotate around an axis, torque must be applied to change its angular momentum. The amount of torque needed to cause any given angular acceleration (the rate of change in angular velocity) is proportional to the moment of inertia of the body. Moment of inertia may be expressed in units of kilogram meter squared (kg·m) in SI units and pound-foot-second squared (lbf·ft·s) in imperial or US units. Moment of inertia plays the role in rotational kinetics that mass (inertia) plays in linear kinetics
Locating the center of mass Locating the center of mass There are several methods for locating the center of mass of a body. This method is useful when one wishes to find the centroid of a complex planar shape with unknown dimensions. It relies on finding the center of mass of a thin body of homogeneous density having the same shape as the complex planar shape. This is a method of determining the center of mass of an L-shaped object. This method is useful when one wishes to find the location of the centroid or center of mass of an object that is easily divided