A Body at Rest Tends to Remain at Rest

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You may recognize the title as being Newton’s first law of motion. Most of us learned it in school. “A body in motion tends to remain in motion; a body at rest tends to remain at rest.” Newton observed that a still object would not move until some outside force acted upon it, for example the wind, gravity or a human hand. An object once moving would not stop until a force stopped it. It is true of inanimate objects, but you could use the same observation on human beings. People who do not move much, or do much, tend to continue along that same way. The longer a person is a couch potato, the more likely that they will continue to be one. Other people seem never to stop moving. The more they do the more energy they seem to have. One difference is that people do not necessarily have to be acted upon by an outside force to change the situation. With effort, by our own will we can overcome inertia and begin moving, or decide that it’s time for a rest.