Posts tagged applied physics
Act Four: The moment (of inertia) of turning

What the heck is moment of inertia?

Simply put, moment of inertia[1], or rotational inertia, is how hard something is to turn. You may have heard of Newton’s second law, which is force equals mass times acceleration. This law describes things that are moving in a straight line. Whenever we start doing turns, however, we turn towards the rotational version of it, which is, torque equals moment of inertia times angular acceleration.

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