The center of mass is the unique point at the center of a distribution of mass in space that has

the property that the weighted position vectors relative to this point sum to zero. In analogy to
statistics, the center of mass is the mean location of a distribution of mass in space.

A system of particles[edit]
In the case of a system of particles Pi, i = 1, …, n , each with mass mi that are located in space
with coordinates ri, i = 1, …, n , the coordinates R of the center of mass satisfy the condition

Solving this equation for R yields the formula

where M is the sum of the masses of all of the particles.

A continuous volume[edit]
If the mass distribution is continuous with the density ρ(r) within a solid Q, then the
integral of the weighted position coordinates of the points in this volume relative to the
center of mass R over the volume V is zero, that is

Solve this equation for the coordinates R to obtain

where M is the total mass in the volume.

If a continuous mass distribution has uniform density, which means ρ is
constant, then the center of mass is the same as the centroid of the volume