Inertia Demo @ Home

Inertia Demo @ Home Project

By Anne Margaret Boswell

Description: I demonstrated inertia with a toy car. I gave a toy car, which was resting on my kitchen counter top, a push. Then I picked up the car after a few seconds in order to demonstrate inertia. The wheels stayed in motion.

Adult explanation: The wheels kept moving once Anne Margaret picked up the toy car because the wheels were already initially moving, so it would take a greater force to make the wheels stop moving, rather than merely picking up the toy car.

My own explanation: This experiment demonstrates the concept of inertia, which says that objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in that motion. The toy car began rolling fast in motion with a constant acceleration. However, when I picked up the toy car, the wheels did not stop moving, because they were trying to resist change. The toy car was in motion so the wheels stayed in that motion, even though the wheels were no longer touching the counter top.