Recent content by jds10011

We're trying to build working models of "whisper dishes" -- two large parabolic dishes placed at a distance and pointed at each other, allowing two people to communicate by whispering at the focal point of one dish and listening at the focal point of the other (or vice versa). At a fairly...

There is a difference between blindly repeating statements, even if they are correct, and actually doing physics. Doing physics is not just remembering which statements to recall when, even if answering textbook questions may well be solved that way. This is especially the case when asserting...

What I was asking was what differentiates the ball's behavior in the two cases. I other words, when we increase the mass, and the ball pulls harder on the string, we are typically willing to say that its inertia has increased, and therefore it tugs harder on the string in a larger effort to...

I don't disagree with these statements. I am not disputing that inertia is just mass (though others are, here and otherwise), nor that it is the tendency to maintain straight-line motion. I am saying that I often hear it mis-applied or mis-represented in other scenarios (see my very first...

I don't see how we can use Newton's laws if we don't think inertia is a valid agreed upon concept. To be specific, how about the "tendency to maintain straight-line motion" in this case. I've written this before without receiving an answer. I'm in the gravitron. The ride spins at a constant...

This is the crux of the original post. What you have written is inconsistent with the accepted definition of inertia, as far as I know; I often hear it misapplied this way. For example, when increasing the speed of an object, the force required is certainly not associated with its present...

I know both of these things are true. The point I was making was that we are not really explaining a root cause of the behavior by saying it is "explained" by Newton's laws. This looks like the same thing as if someone from Newton's time observes a car accelerating along a road, and asks what...

By saying it must occur as a reaction to being pulled as per N3? Or by saying it must occur for F=ma to be true? How does this explain the cause of the ball's action of pulling on the string? This is why I was discussing the snowball, which doesn't behave in the appropriate manner (at high...

Does it seem correct to use inertia to explain why revolving the ball faster means it pulls harder on the string? If so, please help me to understand how inertia explains this. If not, please help me to understand what about the ball causes it to behave in this manner (without just saying it...

I'm specifically asking about the ball's tendency to pull harder on the string as it is revolved in both the case where its mass is increased and in the case where its speed is increased. The first we typically attribute to inertia. The second I often hear attributed to inertia, but I cannot...

Let me know where you see the difference(s), and I'll clarify... I believe the specific example in the more recent post is also given in the original.

So, let me be the passive participant. I'll stand still, hold my hand straight up, and pretend to be a laboratory rod. Tie the string to my finger, and someone else will give the ball an initial velocity and let go. The string will pull on me, and by N3 I will supply the reaction force. Now...

I have proposed the explanation about the structural integrity of the object being whirled. I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or just saying it's complicated and annoying. And yes, I'm not talking about using it to do quantitative problem solving, and I'm not talking about "correcting"...

Sure, but this seems like a cop-out. The ball has an ability to resist my pulling, even when I pull harder. There must be a physical explanation for the ball's end of the bargain. Just as when I was discussing dropping the object onto the table, I could have just said that the object hits the...

Newton's laws match/model the behavior patterns of objects in various situations. I am asking what is actually happening when I have a ball on a string and revolve it faster that causes the ball to pull harder on the string. Is it a fundamentally different thing that happens in comparison to...