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The concept of inertia can be applied to quantum particles, although a localized quantum particle will never have a sharply defined momentum. The core concept of inertia (in the sense, that bodies at rest stay at rest and bodies in motion remain in motion) is cleanly expressed by the Galilei invariance of a theory. And it is easy to show, that the ...

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The answer from a Newtonian perspective: TL;DR: Objects do feel gravitation, but only if they're very big, or if the gravitational field is very strong. Suppose you are in a spacesuit and are orbiting the Earth. Your feet are pointed toward the Earth, your head into space. Because gravitation is a 1/r2 force, the force on your feet is slightly stronger ...

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From a Newtonian perspective, the difference between being accelerated by gravity in freefall (which includes orbits) and being accelerated in a car has to do with the fact that you only "feel" accelerations when the external force is only being applied to one part of your body, rather than accelerating every particle equally as with gravity. For example, if ...

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Consider torque as a force applied to a lever connected to a rotation point. Torque from the piston to the rotating center of the crankshaft is internal to the engine and will not affect the motorcycle unless the engine is connected by a power train to another rotation point on the motorcycle - the rear axle. The motorcycle will NOT try to rotate about its ...

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If we take the free body diagram above and sum the moments about the center of mass, we would find that an increased applied force would in fact cause the solid body to rotate. Perhaps. Or additional forces can appear. If I push up on my car's bumper, a rotational force is being applied. But the normal force on the wheel farther from me ...

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This is the simplest analogy I could think of. Imagine a long narrow carpet sliding across a huge ice rink at 1kph. On the rear end of the carpet stands a very fat (200kg) man wearing roller skates. You want to bring him to a standstill. You could grab the man and dig your ice skates into the ice until he eventually stops. Alternatively, you could grab the ...

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...a truck in motion and it has stack of hay (lets suppose) on the back. Now if the truck comes to a sudden stop will it stop faster if the force exerted by the truck on hay had overcome the friction force (another wording: will it be faster if the hay slips forward) or will it stop faster if the hay remains constant. I tried to find a braking ...

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Not to detract from Floris' answer, but I think this is an instance where it is nice to think in terms of limits. If the hay is tied down, you're stopping an object with mass (truck + hay). If the hay isn't tied down, but on a sufficiently sticky surface such that it doesn't move, it should be the same as stopping it if it were fixed, since the outcome is ...

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On the whole, static friction is higher than dynamic friction. This means that if you can brake without your wheels skidding, you will come to a halt more quickly. So let's assume that the truck brakes without skidding, and see where that gets us. Let's assume that your truck has weight $W = Mg$ with a haystack with additional weight $w = mg$ on top. ...

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Momentum: The resistance of an object to a change in its state of motion. That sounds like a fishy definition of momentum to me. A slightly better definition, at least at your level, is that momentum represents the "amount of motion" an object has. Granted, "amount of motion" is a very vague term, but it stands to reason that if "amount of motion" were ...

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Inertia is an intrinsic characteristic of the object related to its mass. Inertia tells you how much force it will take to cause a particular acceleration on the object. Momentum is a function of an object's mass and velocity. Momentum is a measure of the kinetic energy of the object. A massive object can have any momentum (at least as long as its velocity ...

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