Inertia and Physics.. Paul Chick

[Sarah Fox]

Hi all,

Ric, I expect you want me to weigh in as well!  ;-)

> Now we have all sorts of new goodies to argue about!

No argument here!  What Mark and Don said!

As an illustration of this experiment in real life, consider hammering a
nail into a board.  Acceleration of the hammer is much slower than the
deceleration (from impact).  Therefore force on impact is much higher.
Don't believe it?  Try pushing a 6d nail into pine with all the weight of
your body.  You probably can't do it.  (If you can, you should probably go
on a diet.)  Yet much less force/torque/whatever on the handle of the hammer
was sufficient to drive the nail.  How?  You slowly built the kinetic energy
of the hammer head and then delivered it rapidly to the nail.  This resulted
in a much greater force that was sufficient to "push" the nail into the
wood.  When the hammer head fully decelerated, the nail stopped.  This
tradeoff all has to do with rate of acceleration/deceleration.  Namely,
force is directly proportional to acceleration.  Disclaimer:  This
experiment is described in the loosest of terms, with linear and angular
stuff all garbled together and mixed up all messy-like.  Still, it
illustrates the point, I think.

Anyway, I agree with what Mark and Don said.  No prob...  ;-)

Peace,
Sarah