science

Moment of inertia is the name given to rotational inertia, the rotational analog of mass for linear motion. It appears in the relationships for the dynamics of rotational motion.


Moment of inertia is defined with respect to a specific rotation axis. The moment of inertia of a point mass with respect to an axis is defined as the product of the mass times the distance from the axis squared. The moment of inertia of any extended object is built up from that basic definition. The general form of the moment of inertia involves an integral.

However, in the study of Newtonian Mechanics, Newton's la...