Newton's First Law and Inertia!!

Unit 4 is all about forces! To understand forces better, we learned about the foundation of forces in motion: Newton's three laws. These laws were created by Sir Isaac Newton, a physicist born on January 4, 1643 in Woolsthorpe, England. His ideas became the basis of forces!

Let's focus in on the first of his laws, otherwise known as the Law of Inertia. Newton's Law of Inertia states that "objects in motion will tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside, unbalanced force." This law could also be flipped by saying that "objects at rest will tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside, unbalanced force. You might say, "What does that have to do with that thingy... inertia?" Well, in class we learned that inertia is defined as an object's capability to continue in the state it is in. We also learned that an object's inertia is directly proportional to an object's mass.

Okay, so what does this all mean? The typical thing for objects to do is to stay in the state that they were previously in. If no outside, unbalanced force interrupts this object, it will most likely stay in the state it was in.

Here is an example! (Sorry, it would be much better if I could upload videos but it doesn't let me. :( )

As the water bottle was being acted upon by an outside, unbalanced force (me pushing it), it broke its state of rest and began rolling (state of motion). When it hit the wall, it went from a state of motion to a state of rest. Why? Same thing! The wall is another outside, unbalanced force that changed the water bottle's state of motion to a state of rest. If the wall wasn't there, the water bottle would have kept on rolling along.

Newton's First Law helps us understand more about forces and how they work!!