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sci / sci.physics.research / Re: Is inertia a vector?

Subject: Re: Is inertia a vector?
From: Tom Roberts
Newsgroups: sci.physics.research
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 10:52 UTC
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From: tjoberts137@sbcglobal.net (Tom Roberts)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.research
Subject: Re: Is inertia a vector?
Date: 10 Dec 2023 10:52:28 GMT
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On 10/23/23 6:31 AM, Luigi Fortunati wrote:
> [...]

[The context of this question is clearly Newtonian mechanics.
But my answer holds for relativistic mechanics as well.]

To definitively answer the question "is inertia a vector", one must find
"inertia" in some equation(s). Unfortunately, "inertia" does not appear
in any equation of mechanics. So the question is meaningless, or at
least unanswerable.

[This includes Newton's original "vis insita".]

Note: do not be confused by "moment of inertia" -- look at its
definition and you'll see it is misnamed, and is really the second
moment of mass.

In modern physics,the closest quantity to "inertia" is mass, which is
clearly a scalar (i.e. not a vector).

Tom Roberts

Subject	Author
Re: Is inertia a vector?	Tom Roberts