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Inertial Mass and Inertia

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flano | 12:23 Wed 22nd Jun 2005 | Science
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whats the difference between these terms?

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Inertia is the property of a body such that it tends to keep moving in a straight line unless forced to change.

Inertial mass is in a sense the amount of matter in a system with that property.

Because F=ma you can say it's the ratio of force you need to apply to a body to get a certain acceleration.

Note that Gravitational mass is due to another property of matter, that is it's tendency to attract other matter.

The Gravitational constant G is defined in such a way that in most applications we can consider Gravitation mass to be equivilent to inertial mass even though these are two quite distinct properties of matter

Simply put, one defines the other... Inertial mass is a measure of an object's inertia: its resistance to changing its state of motion when a force is applied. An object with small inertial mass changes its motion more readily, and an object with large inertial mass does so less readily... (Source, Linear Motions Systems)
Hmmm... Synchronocity at work again...

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