Key Inertia

[Carl Meyer]

I'm sorry, but I don't have any letters either before or after my name.
Only between them.

One of my two favorite comments are "I haven't been hampered by a formal
education" and " If you don't have any common sense you should go to
college." They drive my daughter to distraction.  She's going for her MBA.
Fortunately she's already smarter that most MBA's.

When I went to school, they didn"t offer physics.  During world war two.
Common sense is my only advantage.  Sometimes I think I'm blessed by that,
but I do wish I had the opportunity of a good education.

On my tombstone I want it to say "He could tolerate stupidity and ignorance,
but arrogance drove him crazy".

During my career I've worked with too many PHDs to think that they are in
any way superior to anything except arrogance.

Carl Meyer Ptg assoc
Santa Clara, Ca.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Calin Thomason" <calint@operamail.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2003 8:59 AM
Subject: Key Inertia


> I have read this forums discussion about inertia these past weeks with
increasing amusement. It is truly incredible what conclusions physics
students of clearly undergraduate calibre are capable of. I sometimes marvel
at the fact that this country is able to produce any physicists with half a
brain at all.
>
> To the point however. There have been many comments and claims pertaining
to the definition of inertia that attempt to deny any association with
velocity, acceleration, and in one instance even mass. One individual
declaring himself an authority even goes so far as to declare that inertia
is not quantifiable. What utter nonsense.
>
> May I remind you all that Newtons first law is clearly and precisely
described and quantified by Newtons second law. Yes yes, it is true we do
not have a ?unit of inertia? per se. That being said, it is absurd to think
of inertia as unquantifiable, unvarying, or unassociated with mass and
acceleration. Any object has a quantifiable resistance, impedance if you
prefer, to a change in its velocity to any other given velocity, and that
resistance is reflected clearly and precisely in the amount of force
required to achieve that acceleration.
>
> It will take twice as much force to accelerate a 10 kilo object from a one
velocity to another as it will take for a 5 kilo object. Why ??.. the
blatantly obvious reason is because the 10 kilo object has twice as much
inertia. Likewise, if you have two equal masses and wish to accelerate one
twice as much as the other, it will require twice as much force to do so.
Again because the inertia of one is twice that of another. You may think of
inertia is a mirror image of force.
>
> That Newtons second law chooses to express this relationship in terms of
force rather then resistance is superfluous to the understanding of the
nature of inertia.  Force is simply flipside of inertia and likewise. That
students are not taught to think in these terms has a reasonable enough
explanation, it is for most purposes better to use other physics tools and
constructs to describe the various systems we wish too describe. That said,
any student of physics should be able to put 2 and 2 together and see the
sense in any perspective, especially one so simple, regardless of whether it
is usual or not.
>
> I should perhaps mention that I am a PhD, and teach graduate level applied
physics / acoustics and have done so these past 35 years. I would suggest
that at least three of the participants who portend a level of authority
consider going back for a serious brush up.
>
> I do not intend to get involved in any discussion here, and have no
intention of fielding any flurry of protests and questions. Dig back into
your college texts and think about what you read there.
>
> Seasons Greetings
>
> Calin Thomason.
>
> -- 
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