[djr]

What's your take on:

"When a passenger in an airplane feels pushed against his seat as the airplane accelerates down the runway, or when a driver feels pushed to the left when her car makes a sharp turn to the right, what is doing the pushing? Since the time of Newton, this has been attributed to an innate property of matter called inertia."

When being accelerated, we are pushed in the direction of acceleration and that's what we physically "feel". Now there may be some interesting mysteries beneath all this, as the article suggests, but in this set of examples it seems like an effort is being made to mystify scenarios that are completely consistent with basic explanations.

[cinFLA]

but in this set of examples it seems like an effort is being made to mystify scenarios that are completely consistent with basic explanations.

Classical physics is fine for modeling our everyday life. However, as we learn more we must refine our models. For example, light was once modeled as only a wave. Now it is modeled as a wave and a particle. My grad school is almost 30 years ago so maybe someone else can update. Similarly, gravity is modeled as a wave? particle? other? Go figure. Time for a cool one.

[mcsparkie]

When a passenger in an airplane feels pushed against his seat as the airplane accelerates

An airplane passenger's body is not accelerated by the jet engine. It is accelerated by the seat. Thus we feel the seat pushing against us.