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> Physics is full of concepts that are counterintuitive. Inertia is an early example of one such concept. Huh?!? Try to start a car by pushing it -- or stoppin
by CRConrad 5y ago
> Physics is full of concepts that are counterintuitive. Inertia is an early example of one such concept.
Huh?!? Try to start a car by pushing it -- or stopping it, even on flat ground, after it's gathered momentum rolling down some slope -- a few times, and inertia becomes utterly intuitive. I'd imagine that worked for medieval oxcarts, too. Or for moving blocks of stone for the pyramids, or Stonehenge.
- mannerheim 5y agoPerhaps, but prior to Galileo (or perhaps Avicenna?), Aristotelian physics dominated and motion was explained by 'impetus' (this didn't originate from Aristotle, but instead came long after him). Aristotle distinguished between 'natural' motion, which is the motion of falling objects and 'violent' or 'unnatural' motion, which is caused by some agent (a human throwing a stone, for instance). In the theory of impetus, the agent imbues an object with some impetus, and this impetus is only ever temporary, the object stopping once its impetus is exhausted. Today, sure, we know that friction is a force that acts against the momentum of a moving object, but these were alien concepts a thousand years ago.