Newton's First Law

Newton's First Law states that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion continues moving with constant velocity, unless acted upon by a net force. This tendency of objects to resist changes in their motion is called inertia, a property directly related to mass.

This law contradicts Aristotle's view, which held that a force is required to maintain motion. Aristotle believed objects naturally come to rest without a continuous applied force. While this seemed intuitive based on everyday observations—a sliding book stops, a rolling ball slows down—these effects arise from forces like friction and air resistance, not from the absence of a driving force.

Newton recognized that in the absence of friction and other resistive forces, an object in motion would continue indefinitely at constant velocity. The state of an object is characterized by its velocity (including rest as zero velocity), and only a net force changes that state. Inertia is the intrinsic resistance to such changes: greater mass means greater inertia, making it harder to accelerate or decelerate the object.

![image](https://physicsgraph.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.

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