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Re: [Phys-L] inertia and the tablecloth demo



Except that Newton's First Law is often referred to as the Law of Inertia. I think most here would say that the first law is about momentum and the conservation of such in the absence of external net forces. I used to have an animation that I used in class showing how an astronaut in space could be crushed between two 'weightless' elephants. In reality they worried about getting crushed between the shuttle and Hubble. So, at least in my mind, inertia has been used not just for mass but for something moving that is difficult to accelerate (usually to stop or deflect). Yes, the main focus is on the mass, but not exclusively so, or so it seems to me.

rwt

On 8/18/2016 7:35 PM, Jeffrey Schnick wrote:
I consider mass and inertia to be the same thing. Inertia is the word one tends to use when one is talking about the concept and mass is the word one tends to use when one wants to assign a value to it. It is often said that "Mass is a measure of inertia." (That phrase, in quotes, gets 65,100 hits on Google.) I prefer "Mass is inertia." which only gets 18,200 hits.




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Richard Tarara
Professor Emeritus
Saint Mary's College

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