Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/paper-2/12/a/solution

Orient the common axis of the wedge faces along and its azimuthal bisector along positive . Reflection symmetries give . In spherical coordinates, use , , and . The volume is
Since , the first moment is
Dividing by the volume locates the centre of mass:
This is the centroid formula for a spherical wedge.
For the sketch, is positive and decreases from to , with . Indeed, on putting , the sign of is the sign of . The negative of this expression has derivative for and starts at zero, proving strict decrease.
Figure 1.
Distance of the centre of mass of a spherical wedge from its sphere centre
. Details.

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