Study the following scenarios and identify what type of inertia tends to resist the change.
1. When the bus suddenly starts, the passenger on the bus tends to fall backwards.
2. When a passenger jumps out of a moving bus, he/she falls down.
3. A cyclist riding on a level road does not come to rest immediately even he/she stops pedalling.
Only 1 is due to the inertia of rest and others are due to the inertia of motion.
The inertia of rest is the tendency of the body to change the state from rest to motion. The inertia of motion is the tendency of the body to change the state from motion to rest.
1. When the bus starts suddenly, the passenger tends to fall backward because the passenger’s body resists the change of state from rest to motion. Thus, it is inertia of rest.
2. When the passenger jumps out of the moving bus, he falls down because the passenger’s body resists the change in the state from motion to rest. Thus, it is inertia of motion.
3. When the pedalling was stopped the cycle does not stop immediately because the cycle resists the change of state from motion to rest. Thus, it is due to the inertia of motion.