Inertia and Physics.. Paul Chick

[Richard Brekne]

Don, Sarah and others.

Ok... I can live with this if both you are in agreement. Sorry to "beat
a thing to death" there Don, but I have seen way too many discussions on
this theme die an early an useless death all because of a seemingly
simple <<apparent>> disagreement on the meaning of terminology. I'd like
to see Jim Ellis sign in on the below sentence as well.

Sarah Fox wrote:
> 
> Hi Don (and Ric!),
> 
> > A correct sentence would be, "Because of the effects of inertia, it takes
> > one newton to accelerate an object with a mass of 1 kilogram at one meter
> > per second per second."
> 
> Yes, agreed!  :-)
> 

Hard to pin you folks down to a specific point evidently. Had you
answered directly this querie a week ago when I first posed it we would
have been a week ahead of the game :) I am still left wondering why you
cant turn the above sentence around as a quantification of inertia, but
that is not neccessary for the purposes of list discussion, so I will
not beg an answer to that.

Instead, let me ask a concrete question. If it takes one newton to
accelerate an object with a mass of one kilogram at one meter per
second, and that object bangs into another object... will the first
object impart a force of exactly one newton upon the second ? 

Cheers, and thanks for your patience in all this.

RicB