Inertia

[Alan McCoy]

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This has been an interesting thread. 

On the one hand we have Don Gilmore who says the following: "Inertia is not
an inherrent, quantifiable property of an object, it's an effect, like the
Doppler effect.  There are no units of "inertia"; one object cannot have
more "inertia" than another.  It can have more kinetic energy, or momentum,
or mass, or velocity, or indeed "moment" of inertia than another object
since those are measurable, quantifiable properties."

Then we have Jim E. who states:  

"Inertia is directly related to mass.  A lead ball the size of a ping-pong
ball certainly has a lot more inertia than the ping-pong ball because it has
a lot more mass."


We are talking right past each other. I'm with Ric. We need some clarity. Oh
what the hell, I'll try.

The lead ping pong ball does not in fact have more inertia than the regular
ping pong ball. However, it does take more force to change its direction
+/or speed, i.e. its velocity. It takes more force because it is more
massive, not because it has more inertia. Inertia is "the tendency" of a
body (an object) to resist a change in its velocity (at rest, that velocity
is zero). A more massive object doesn't "have" more inertia, it has more
mass. 

Ed Sutton is really trying to steer us in a more fruitful direction when he
says:

But what we are trying to do here (I think?), is try to make piano actions
better for the pianists.
Since there are so many kinds of pianists, there might be many ways to make
pianos better, of more adapted to various players and ways of playing.

And in particular, we were concerned with the placement of key leads.  For a
long time many of us have followed the rule of thumb that it was better to
produce a given front weight by placing a large quantity of lead close to
the balance rail than by placing a smaller quantity close to the front, that
this makes the action "feel better" and repeat faster, at least in the bass
octaves.

If this is true, then it is worth going to a lot of trouble to do it, if
not, it is a waste of time.

FWIW,

Alan

____________________________________________
Alan McCoy, RPT
Eastern Washington University
509-359-4627
amccoy@mail.ewu.edu 




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