Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Thus, ultimately, "inertia" in modern classical physics has come to be a name for the same phenomenon as described by Newton's first law of motion, and the two concepts are now considered to be equivalent. The effect of inertial mass: if pulled slowly, the upper thread breaks (a). If pulled quickly, the lower thread breaks (b).
When Newton's laws are applied to rotating extended bodies, they lead to new quantities that are analogous to those invoked in the original laws. The analogue of mass is the moment of inertia, the counterpart of momentum is angular momentum, and the counterpart of force is torque. Angular momentum is calculated with respect to a reference point ...
The moment of inertia depends on how mass is distributed around an axis of rotation, and will vary depending on the chosen axis. For a point-like mass, the moment of inertia about some axis is given by , where is the distance of the point from the axis, and is the mass. For an extended rigid body, the moment of inertia is just the sum of all ...
Euler's second law states that the rate of change of angular momentum L about a point that is fixed in an inertial reference frame (often the center of mass of the body), is equal to the sum of the external moments of force acting on that body M about that point: [1] [4] [5]
In classical physics and special relativity, an inertial frame of reference (also called an inertial space or a Galilean reference frame) is a frame of reference in which objects exhibit inertia: they remain at rest or in uniform motion relative to the frame until acted upon by external forces.
Careful experiments have shown that the inertial mass on the left side and gravitational mass on the right side are numerically equal and independent of the material composing the masses. The equivalence principle is the hypothesis that this numerical equality of inertial and gravitational mass is a consequence of their fundamental identity.
The inertia and the inertial mass describe this property of physical bodies at the qualitative and quantitative level respectively. According to Newton's second law of motion, if a body of fixed mass m is subjected to a single force F, its acceleration a is given by F/m.
In physics, reduced mass is a measure of the effective inertial mass of a system with two or more particles when the particles are interacting with each other. Reduced mass allows the two-body problem to be solved as if it were a one-body problem. Note, however, that the mass determining the gravitational force is not reduced.