In this question, you will use integration to calculate the centroid (or centre of mass) of regions in the plane. If you think of a two-dimensional region as a thin, uniformly dense solid, then the centroid of the region is located at the balancing point of this object.
Let \( R \) be the region bounded by a continuous function \( f(x) \geq 0 \) over an interval \( [a, b] \), and let \( A \) denote the area of the region \( R \). The \( x \) and \( y \) coordinates of the centroid of \( R \) are calculated as follows:
\[\begin{align*} x_c &= \frac{1}{A} \int^{b}_{a} x f(x) ~ dx \\ y_c &= \frac{1}{A} \int^{b}_{a} \frac{1}{2} \big[ f(x) \big]^2 ~ dx \end{align*}\]
- Using the given formulas, determine the location of the centroid of the region bounded by the function \( f(x) = 1 \) over \( [0, 2] \). Does this answer agree with what one would expect from looking at the region in question?
- Using the given formulas, determine the location of the centroid of the region bounded by the function \( f(x) = \sqrt{1 - x^2} \) over \( [-1, 1] \). Does this answer agree with what one would expect from looking at the region in question?
- Determine the location of the centroid of the region bounded by the function \( f(x) = \ln(x) \) over \( [1, e] \).