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Concept

Inertia

A sphere emits a trail of glowing particles as it moves through a misty environment, illustrating the concept of inertia where an object resists changes in its motion.

The tendency of a body to resist changes in its motion. A stationary object resists being set in motion; a moving one resists being slowed, sped up, or turned. The quantity of inertia is what we call mass. Galileo described the principle qualitatively; Newton made it the first of his laws of motion. Every collision, from billiards to car crashes, is inertia being negotiated.

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