WHAT THE HECK IS

Written & illustrated by:

CONNOR GETZLAFF

Inertia ??

Inertia A long long time ago, a

guy named Sir Isaac Newton was a scientist.

He was really smart and figured out a lot of things about the way stuff works.

People call his discoveries “Newton’s laws of motion”

Inertia His first law of

motion says that if an object is moving, it wants to continue moving-and if an object is still, it wants to stay still.

Inertia These objects want

to keep on doing what they’re doing and they will- unless something stops them.

Inertia The more

something weighs, the more inertia it has.

That is why it is harder to lift or push a heavier thing rather than a light thing.

WHAT??? The concept is confusing

but can be explained. Have you ever been riding

in the car while holding a drink? When the car comes to a stop, the drink comes spilling out because it wants to keep on moving forwards. ?

WHAT??? The is liquid does this because it has has inertia- a resistance to a change in motion.

The more inertia something has, the more it will keep doing what it is doing.

SO WHAT?? Ok, inertia tells us how

much an object will keep moving the way it’s moving…but WHO CARES?

Why is this important? When are we going to use

this info? Inertia has a big influence

in everyday activities and by knowing more about it, we can protect ourselves and use it to help us.

SO WHAT??

Good things about it…

Inertia has many good features and can be used to our advantage.

We can use it in games like football, building things like catapults, and many other ways.

Using it to help us

In football, we know that we want linebackers to have lots of inertia, that way they will resist the push on them and successfully block for the QB.

Using it to help us

Inertia helps us design things like catapults or slingshots.

The catapult moves forwards and when it stops the object in it keeps on going.

Bad things about it

Inertia can hurt us though, like in a car crash, the car might stop but the driver would continue on until they smash on the wind shield.

How we can protect ourselves?

If the driver is wearing a seatbelt, however, he will start to move forwards but then the seatbelt will apply a force to him (remember the 2nd page?) and he will stop moving towards the windshield.

The concept of inertia is hard to grasp, even for me in 8th grade. It is also hard to explain very simply, but if I ever tried to, I would just say: when something is moving or still, it wants to stay doing what it’s doing. It will keep on doing what it’s doing unless something either stops it from moving or (if it started out still) moves it. Inertia is a measure of how much force is needed (in some cases how hard you have to push on it) to change what it’s doing. The more force needed (or the harder you have to push) to change what its doing, the more inertia it has.