Moment of Inertia

The moment of inertia is sometimes called and referred to as "angular mass." It is the "amount of resistance" to rotational motion.

The moment of inertia of a point mass is

I \ \stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\ m r^2\,\!

The moment of inertia is additive, therefore, for a rigid body consisting of $N$ point masses $m_{i}$ with distances $r_{i}$ to the rotation axis, the total moment of inertia is the sum of the point-mass moments of inertia

I \ \stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\ \sum_{i=1}^{N} {m_{i} r_{i}^2}\,\!

The moment of inertia is commonly used to calculate torque when multiplied by the angular acceleration. This analogous to F = ma.

Torque = Ia\,

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