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Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to changes in its motion. According to Newton's first law of motion, an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. The concept of inertia developed gradually over centuries through the works of philosophers and scientists including Aristotle, John Philoponus, Jean Buridan, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton. Newton defined inertia as the tendency of objects to resist any change in their motion and incorporated it as the first of his three laws of motion.

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60 views

Inertia: Jump To Navigation Jump To Search

Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to changes in its motion. According to Newton's first law of motion, an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. The concept of inertia developed gradually over centuries through the works of philosophers and scientists including Aristotle, John Philoponus, Jean Buridan, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton. Newton defined inertia as the tendency of objects to resist any change in their motion and incorporated it as the first of his three laws of motion.

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Inertia

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This article is about inertia in physics. For other uses, see Inertia (disambiguation).
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Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its velocity. This
includes changes to the object's speed, or direction of motion. An aspect of this property
is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at a constant speed, when
no forces act upon them.
Inertia comes from the Latin word, iners, meaning idle, sluggish. Inertia is one of the
primary manifestations of mass, which is a quantitative property of physical
systems. Isaac Newton defined inertia as his first law in his Philosophiæ Naturalis
Principia Mathematica, which states:
The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as
much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of
moving uniformly forward in a straight line.[1]
In common usage, the term "inertia" may refer to an object's "amount of resistance to
change in velocity" or for simpler terms, "resistance to a change in motion" (which is
quantified by its mass), or sometimes to its momentum, depending on the context. The
term "inertia" is more properly understood as shorthand for "the principle of inertia" as
described by Newton in his first law of motion: an object not subject to any net external
force moves at a constant velocity. Thus, an object will continue moving at its
current velocity until some force causes its speed or direction to change.
On the surface of the Earth, inertia is often masked by gravity and the effects
of friction and air resistance, both of which tend to decrease the speed of moving
objects (commonly to the point of rest). This misled the philosopher Aristotle to believe
that objects would move only as long as force was applied to them. [2][3]
The principle of inertia is one of the fundamental principles in classical physics that are
still used today to describe the motion of objects and how they are affected by the
applied forces on them.

Contents

 1History and development of the concept


o 1.1Early understanding of motion
o 1.2Theory of impetus
o 1.3Classical inertia
o 1.4Relativity
 2Rotational inertia
 3See also
 4References
 5Further reading
 6External links

History and development of the concept[edit]


Early understanding of motion[edit]
Before the Renaissance, the most generally accepted theory of motion in Western
philosophy was based on Aristotle who around about 335 BC to 322 BC said that, in the
absence of an external motive power, all objects (on Earth) would come to rest and that
moving objects only continue to move so long as there is a power inducing them to do
so.[4] Aristotle explained the continued motion of projectiles, which are separated from
their projector, by the action of the surrounding medium, which continues to move the
projectile in some way.[5] Aristotle concluded that such violent motion in a void was
impossible.[6]
Despite its general acceptance, Aristotle's concept of motion was disputed on several
occasions by notable philosophers over nearly two millennia. For
example, Lucretius (following, presumably, Epicurus) stated that the "default state" of
matter was motion, not stasis.[7] In the 6th century, John Philoponus criticized the
inconsistency between Aristotle's discussion of projectiles, where the medium keeps
projectiles going, and his discussion of the void, where the medium would hinder a
body's motion. Philoponus proposed that motion was not maintained by the action of a
surrounding medium, but by some property imparted to the object when it was set in
motion. Although this was not the modern concept of inertia, for there was still the need
for a power to keep a body in motion, it proved a fundamental step in that direction. [8][9]
[10]
 This view was strongly opposed by Averroes and by many scholastic philosophers
who supported Aristotle. However, this view did not go unchallenged in the Islamic
world, where Philoponus did have several supporters who further developed his ideas.
In the 11th century, Persian polymath Ibn Sina (Avicenna) claimed that a projectile in a
vacuum would not stop unless acted upon. [11]
Theory of impetus[edit]
Main article: Theory of impetus
See also: Conatus
In the 14th century, Jean Buridan rejected the notion that a motion-generating property,
which he named impetus, dissipated spontaneously. Buridan's position was that a
moving object would be arrested by the resistance of the air and the weight of the body
which would oppose its impetus.[12] Buridan also maintained that impetus increased with
speed; thus, his initial idea of impetus was similar in many ways to the modern concept
of momentum. Despite the obvious similarities to more modern ideas of inertia, Buridan
saw his theory as only a modification to Aristotle's basic philosophy, maintaining many
other peripatetic views, including the belief that there was still a fundamental difference
between an object in motion and an object at rest. Buridan also believed that impetus
could be not only linear but also circular in nature, causing objects (such as celestial
bodies) to move in a circle.
Buridan's thought was followed up by his pupil Albert of Saxony (1316–1390) and
the Oxford Calculators, who performed various experiments that further undermined the
classical, Aristotelian view. Their work in turn was elaborated by Nicole Oresme who
pioneered the practice of demonstrating laws of motion in the form of graphs.
Shortly before Galileo's theory of inertia, Giambattista Benedetti modified the growing
theory of impetus to involve linear motion alone:
"…[Any] portion of corporeal matter which moves by itself when an impetus has been
impressed on it by any external motive force has a natural tendency to move on a
rectilinear, not a curved, path."[13]
Benedetti cites the motion of a rock in a sling as an example of the inherent linear
motion of objects, forced into circular motion.
Classical inertia[edit]
According to historian of science Charles Coulston Gillispie, inertia "entered science as
a physical consequence of Descartes' geometrization of space-matter, combined with
the immutability of God."[14]

Galileo Galilei

The principle of inertia, which originated with Aristotle for "motions in a void", [15] states
that an object tends to resist a change in motion. According to Newton, an object will
stay at rest or stay in motion (i.e. maintain its velocity) unless acted on by a net external
force, whether it results from gravity, friction, contact, or some other force. The
Aristotelian division of motion into mundane and celestial became increasingly
problematic in the face of the conclusions of Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century,
who argued that the Earth is never at rest, but is actually in constant motion around the
Sun.[16] Galileo, in his further development of the Copernican model, recognized these
problems with the then-accepted nature of motion and, at least partially, as a result,
included a restatement of Aristotle's description of motion in a void as a basic physical
principle:
A body moving on a level surface will continue in the same direction at a constant speed
unless disturbed.[17]
Galileo writes that "all external impediments removed, a heavy body on a spherical
surface concentric with the earth will maintain itself in that state in which it has been; if
placed in movement towards the west (for example), it will maintain itself in that
movement."[18] This notion which is termed "circular inertia" or "horizontal circular inertia"
by historians of science, is a precursor to, but distinct from, Newton's notion of
rectilinear inertia.[19][20] For Galileo, a motion is "horizontal" if it does not carry the moving
body towards or away from the center of the earth, and for him, "a ship, for instance,
having once received some impetus through the tranquil sea, would move continually
around our globe without ever stopping." [21][22]

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