In Newton’s first law of motion, Newton states that an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will remain at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an outside force. More easily put, objects keep doing what they’re doing unless messed with. This law deals with forces and changes in velocity. The resistance to changing state of motion is called inertia. Therefore this law is also called the law of inertia. When multiple forces are applied on a force you add them together to get the net force. This is the sum of all the forces put together. When the net force is zero then the object is either not moving or moving at a constant velocity. This is called equilibrium. When an object is at equilibrium, all the forces cancel each other out.
The car, which has more mass, has more inertia than the tiny mouse. |
Newton was actually not the first person to figure this law. At first Aristotle created a moderation of the law but didn’t put it into words. Also Galileo discovered this same law but didn’t put it into words. When Sir Isaac Newton made this discovery into the first law of motion he gave credit to Galileo, the original founder of the Law of Inertia. It is in the 1687 edition of Principia Mathematica.
