Moment of Inertia for Dummies

Moment of inertia of a rod

Self-appointed “professional freelancers” who write for pay sites are a source of vast quantities of misinformation. In their zeal to earn pennies, they often write about topics for which they lack even the faintest educational background. One of the funniest (or saddest) I’ve seen in a long time has finally been taken down by eHow “science” and replaced by text that more closely approaches technically correct.

This one’s a case in which the "journalist" was tricked by the word moment in the phrase “moment of inertia” into thinking that the technical term has something to do with a point in time. The author (also known as my Dumbass of the Day) is Jennifer Fleming, an “eHow contributor” whose long list of articles on the site has the potential to create an extensive series of stupidities. 

Although the article itself has (mercifully) been removed from that paragon of accuracy, eHow.com, you can still find the offending text snippet by googling the first ten words or so: As the cylinder descended into the ground, it rotated clockwise; however, at any point upon ascent it could have reversed its rotation resulting in a moment of inertia...  This is from an article entitled “How to Write an Expression for the Moment of Inertia.” Ms. Fleming, hoping to capitalize on an internet meme of the day, penned a heartfelt article about the rescue of Chilean miners in 2010. In doing so, she described the “moment of inertia” as that brief instant when the rescue cylinder stopped rotating to the left, paused, and then started rotating to the right.

Dumbass, indeed Dumbass of the Day, in fact.... 

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