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This wasn’t the revolutionary part about Newton’s conception of inertia. It was the counterpart: that an object in motion will tend to keep going forever unless acted upon by a force. This was pretty staggering in a world where an arrow fired from a bow (below escape velocity, you snitty little pedants) will slow down and fall to the ground as though getting tired on its own.
The prevailing theory in Europe at time was still Aristotle’s idea that a force was necessary for objects to remain in motion. The theories on how an arrow or any other thrown object remained in motion involved an impromptu Rube Goldberg contraption involving the object and the atmosphere.
I mean living on Earth where things fall for seemingly no reason at all, that’s pretty damn revolutionary
Revolutionary like the Earth going around the sun
That’s a pretty gross oversimplification of inertia. The more mass an object has, the more energy that’s required to accelerate it.
The genius lies in the understanding that a heavy object, once moving, will prefer to continue moving than come to a rest. This is why an 18-wheeler needs more distance to stop than a small car. Some people’s intuition tells them that a heavy object will come to a rest quickly.
One must only observe rocks rolling down a hill to see heavier things have more momentum at the same speed, it’s surprising it was not documented even earlier
There is a subtle genius in establishing the concept of “net force” as something that can be treated mathematically, and that fully predicts an object’s motion. He framed the problem
holds up stone
let’s go of stone
stone starts moving to the floor
Explain this, Isaac!
