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M Mo om me en nt t o of f I In ne er rt ti ia a
Like the centre of mass, the moment of inertia is a function of a body that is correlated to its mass
distribution. Moment of inertia provides a measurement of the resistance of a body to a change in
its rotational motion. If an object is at rest, the larger the moment of inertia of an object, the more
difficult it is to put that body into rotational motion. The larger the moment of inertia of an object,
the more difficult it is to stop its rotational motion.
Moment of Inertia of a Single Particle: For a very easy case the moment of
inertia of a single particle about an axis is given by, I = mr
2
Here, m is the mass of the particle and r its distance from the axis under
consideration.
m
r
Moment of Inertia of an object of Particles
The moment of inertia of an object of particles about an axis is shown
by :
2
i i
i
I mr =
_
m
1
r
1
m
2
r
2
m
3
r
3
Where r
i
is the perpendicular displacement from the axis to the ith particle, which has a mass m
i
.
Moment of Inertia of Rigid Bodies: For a continuous mass distribution such as
found in a hard object, we remove the summation of Eq. (ii) by an integral. If
the object is divided into infinitesimal components of mass dm and if r is the
distance from a mass components to the axis of motion, the moment of inertia
is,
2
I r dm =
}
Where the integral is taken over the system.
r
dm
Radius of Gyration: Radius of gyration may be described as the distance from the axis at which, if
the entire mass of the object were to be concentrated, the moment of inertia would be the similar
about the given axis as with its actual distribution of mass.
Consider a rigid object consists of n particles of each of the mass m. Let r
1
, r
2
, ...... r
n
be the
perpendicular distances of these particles from the axis of motion. Then
2 2 2
1 2 n
I mr mr ..... mr = + + +
2 2 2
1 2 n
m r r ..... r ( = + + +

2 2 2
1 2 n
r r ..... r
m n
n
( + + +
=
(

2 2 2
1 2 n
r r ..... r
M
n
( + + +
=
(

(where M = m n) (i)
If whole mass of the object is regarded to be concentrated at a perpendicular distance K, then
I = M K
2
(ii)
From eqs. (1) and (2),
1
2 2 2
2
1 2 n
r r ..... r
K
n
( + + +
=
(

(iii)
Therefore, radius of gyration of an object about an axis is same to the root mean square distance
of the constituent particles from the given axis.