Can you measure inertia

It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Is there any application of inertia? Inertia is not actually a something in its own right. Literally it means, from Latin, the language in which Newton wrote the Principle, no-action.

It is an absence of active force as in inertial reference frame. The absence of something cannot be a measurable quantity. There are two closely related ideas, which can be measured. Inertial mass refers to the amount of active force needed to cause a given acceleration, and Moment of inertia, which refers to the amount of torque needed to cause a given a given angular acceleration.

The correct answer is By its mass. There is a resistance offered by an object to change its state of motion. If it is at rest it tends to remain at rest; if it is moving it tends to keep moving. This property of an object is called its inertia. A force that is just enough to cause a small cart to pick up a large velocity will produce a negligible change in the motion of a train.

This is because in comparison to the cart the train has a much lesser tendency to change its state of motion. Accordingly, we say that the train has more inertia than the cart. Clearly, heavier or more massive objects offer larger inertia. Quantitatively, the inertia of an object is measured by its mass. Get Started for Free Download App. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more.

Is "Mass" really measuring unit for inertia? Ask Question. Asked 1 year, 3 months ago. Active 8 months ago. Viewed 5k times. Improve this question. Sourav Singh. Sourav Singh Sourav Singh 2 2 silver badges 6 6 bronze badges. Please keep in mind that comments should be used for suggesting improvements and requesting clarification on the question, not for answering. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Harry Johnston Harry Johnston 1, 15 15 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges.

If not, you'll have to use a higher force in your example. A 20 kg curling stone starts at 3 miles per hour and takes 92 feet to stop.

I think that's 0. Show 1 more comment. Charles Francis Charles Francis 11k 4 4 gold badges 19 19 silver badges 37 37 bronze badges. Otherwise a non-linear relationship would be needed. It remains unclear whether such a thing is possible, or whether experimental evidence could justify it.

What part? What reasoning? The main way is to utilize non linear field equations to avoid the superposition principle and hide the violations in the regimes we have tested it so far while at the same time having violations on galactic and cosmological scales or in the strong gravity regime. The theoretical possibility of this is the main reason we still bother to test this and not just take it for granted.

Hope this helps. Bob D Bob D Hannelore the blond girl was born and raised on a space station. For the other two it's there first time in the orbit. The low-gravity object will only be easier to move in two situations: Moving it against the gravitational potential e. OrangeDog OrangeDog 4 4 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges. JerryH JerryH 21 1 1 bronze badge. Dvij D. Under a lack of gravity or under micro-gravity conditions , objects still have inertia.

Inertia cannot depend on gravity. This property is called mass. And that is the root of all confusion. And if the opposing incline was not even inclined at all that is, if it were oriented along the horizontal , then Isaac Newton built on Galileo's thoughts about motion. Newton's first law of motion declares that a force is not needed to keep an object in motion. Slide a book across a table and watch it slide to a rest position.

The book in motion on the table top does not come to a rest position because of the absence of a force; rather it is the presence of a force - that force being the force of friction - that brings the book to a rest position. In the absence of a force of friction, the book would continue in motion with the same speed and direction - forever!

Or at least to the end of the table top. A force is not required to keep a moving book in motion. In actuality, it is a force that brings the book to rest. All objects resist changes in their state of motion. All objects have this tendency - they have inertia. But do some objects have more of a tendency to resist changes than others? Absolutely yes! The tendency of an object to resist changes in its state of motion varies with mass. Mass is that quantity that is solely dependent upon the inertia of an object.

The more inertia that an object has, the more mass that it has. A more massive object has a greater tendency to resist changes in its state of motion. Suppose that there are two seemingly identical bricks at rest on the physics lecture table. Yet one brick consists of mortar and the other brick consists of Styrofoam. Without lifting the bricks, how could you tell which brick was the Styrofoam brick? You could give the bricks an identical push in an effort to change their state of motion.

The brick that offers the least resistance is the brick with the least inertia - and therefore the brick with the least mass i. A common physics demonstration relies on this principle that the more massive the object, the more that object resist changes in its state of motion. The demonstration goes as follows: several massive books are placed upon a teacher's head. A wooden board is placed on top of the books and a hammer is used to drive a nail into the board.