| abstract
| - Please see Newton's laws of motion
- (Inertia: the tendency of an object to resist changes in its state of motion.) Basically, an object will 'keep doing what it was doing' unless acted on by an unbalance force. If the object was sitting still, it will remain stationary. If it was moving at a constant velocity, it will keep moving. It takes force to change the motion of an object. The first law states that all objects have inertia. The more mass an object has, the more inertia is has (and the harder it is to change its motion) A powerful train begins to pull a long line of carriages that were sitting at rest. Since the carriages are so big, they have a great deal of inertia and it takes a large force to change their motion. Once they are moving, it takes a large force to stop them. If the forces on an object are equal and opposite, they are said to be balanced, and the object experiences no change in motion. They are not equal and opposite, then the forces are unbalanced and the motion of the object changes.
* A soccer ball is sitting at rest, it takes an unbalanced force of a kick to change its motion. If objects in motion tend to stay in motion, why don't moving objects keep moving forever? Things don't keep moving forever because there's almost always an unbalanced force acting upon it. In outer space, away from gravity and any sources of friction, a rocket ship launched with a certain speed will continue to travel at that speed unless stopped by an unbalanced force. Inertia explains why you sometimes 'feel' lighter or heavier when in a lift as it first moves off or slows to a stop. It also tells why you 'move sideways' when a car corners, you keep trying to travel in a straight line.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)