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Re: Weight and Mass




At 05:59 PM 9/24/01 -0500, cliff parker wrote:
> >Any ideas on how one could convince students that the resistance one feels
>when pushing a car is largely because of inertia and not friction, short of
> >repeating the experiment on the moon?

I do a demonstration that uses a 68 pound cannonball, a basketball
and a 10 pound sledge hammer. I use the hammer to accelerate each of
the objects across the floor. (It is also a nice demo to discuss with
impulses.) The rolling motion minimizes the kinetic frictional force.
With a small class size you could have the students come down and
push each object to get it rolling. The rolling motion does sometimes
bring up additional questions.

Dave Clark