What is the relationship between mass and inertia? Explain with the help of examples.
Answer:
The mass of a body is a measure of its inertia. It means larger the mass of a body, larger will be the inertia offered by the body to change its state of motion. The following examples will clarify the concept:
- When we kick a football, it flies a long way but at the same time if we kick a stone of the same size, it hardly moves, as the stone resists a change in its motion better than the football because of its more mass.
- We can increase the velocity of our bicycle by pedaling harder, i.e., on applying more force. But the same force will produce a negligible change in the motion of a bus, because in comparison to the bicycle, a bus has more tendency to oppose any change in its state of motion because of its larger mass i.e., the bus has more inertia than the bicycle.
The SI unit of mass and inertia is kilogram (kg).