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Welcome to our Physics lesson on Moment of Inertia, this is the second lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Dynamics of Rotational Motion, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
Moment of inertia, I in the rotational motion is the analogue of mass. It is a quantity expressing a body's tendency to resist angular acceleration, i.e. to change in the actual state of rotation. Moment of inertia is the sum of the products of the mass of each particle in the body with the square of its distance from the axis of rotation. Moment of inertia therefore is quantitative measure of the rotational inertia of a body.
Mathematically, we have:
Obviously, the unit of moment of inertia is [kg × m2] as mass is measured in kg and radius in metre (radius here is raised at power two).
Look at the figure:
A 2 kg object rotates around a fixed axis at 3 m away from it as shown in the figure above. What is the moment of inertia of this object?
Applying the equation of moment of inertia, we obtain:
You have reached the end of Physics lesson 7.2.2 Moment of Inertia. There are 8 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Dynamics of Rotational Motion, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.
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