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Re: Inertia and Lenz's Law



At 10:00 AM 11/27/97 -0500, Tom McCarthy wrote:
I was at a talk where a physicist stated that pulling a table cloth out
from beneath a set table was not truly a demonstration of the property of
inertia. What is your sense of this?

Demonstrations, like the models which underly our theoretical understanding
of the world around us, are necessarily simplified pictures of reality.
Yes, the table-cloth demonstration helps illuminate for students the
concept of inertia. If you tell them there is nothing else to the
experiment they will catch you on it, because there is clearly more going
on. If you want to include _everything_ that's going on, you also need to
discuss friction, torque, and a few other things I've probably forgotten.



George Spagna **********************************************
Department of Physics * *
Randolph-Macon College * "I can explain it for you, *
P.O. Box 5005 * *
Ashland, VA 23005-5505 * I can't understand it for you." *
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phone: (804) 752-7344 * - Anonymous *
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e-mail: gspagna@rmc.edu **********************************************
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