Law of Inertia

Jose Luis Torres Pagan

According to Newton's First Law, or Law of Inertia a body can't change by itself its initial state, either at rest or in motion unless a force is applied on it. Suppose for a moment that our planet is the one who receives this force and cease to turn on itself. What would happen then in its surface? Would there be any change or everything would go normal?

The Planet Earth rotates at one speed and everything on its surface rotates at the same speed. If the Earth stops spinning we would still be rotating at that speed, by the effect of inertia. For example, if we drive a car in a speed of 50 km / h and stops suddenly we can't avoid a shift, unless we hold on with something or something support us in some way. Another example would be with the washing machines in our homes, you just have to see the washing clothes. Everything revolves around an axis, as in our planet, but it would not be hard to imagine what would happen if the axis is stopped suddenly. Certainly the clothes would still be in motion and would not stop just at the same time as their axis. That would happen in our planet if by "x" reason stops rotating, everything in the surface either be cars, oceans, animals and even humans could not prevent a displacement. But that effect would not be the same all over the planet, the closer we are to the axis of rotation, closer to the poles, the lower would be the effect on its surface. If we start to think about other consequences it would be that one part of our planet would be continually exposed to the sun, causing extreme temperatures and with it a host of problems. In contrast to the other side of our planet would be in the shadow, reaching very low temperatures that it would not be anything positive for the survival of our planet.

It is interesting when you think about the consequences that can occur and that’s when you realize that we live in a place under ideal conditions, we have our gravity, oxygen, and more. That even though we try to understand things, How, When and why? does not change the fact that this should be for life to take its own course. Well, with this thought I wanted to emphasize the importance of Newton's first law, the law of inertia in our planet and physics, because thanks to this is that we have understood many things that happen around us and things that maybe could happen.