"I can understand that a bowling ball has a certain ability to move a bowling pin because of how much mass it has. But what I cant figure out is how the speed of light would effect this. How does the speed of light play into this ?"<br />------------<br />if speed of light were much faster then the mass would be much smaller (that is the inertia would be diminished)<br /><br />it is simple consequence of the equation E=mc2<br /><br />to preserve the stated equivalency by that equation, if you increase c you have to lower m in order that E would stay equal to the product of m and c squared<br /><br />to make it more foolproof argument, lets say E is Energy of electron or Ee, then mass M will be Me, so if c increases then Me has to decrease in order that Ee could remain the same, ie. the product of mass and speed of light squared has to remain equivalent (in magnitude) to energy on the other side of equation<br /><br />of course, the square just means that small change in c will beget large change in mass (inertia) in order to preserve the equality of both sides of the equation<br /><br />to put it very plainly, if by some freaky happening the speed of light should be doubled tomorrow morning, then the mass of everything would be just a quarter of what it was before you went to bed LOL<br /><br />and of course, if the speed of light slowed down, the mass (inertia) of everything would increase proportionally<br /><br />in unphysical extreme limit, if the speed of light were infinite, then mass would go to zero, it would take no force at all to accelerate anything to any speed (I repeat again, that is all beyond limit of real world such consideration), on the other hand if the speed of light slowed down to a halt, you could never move anything any longer, the mass (inertia) of everything would be infinite, ie the world would freeze up in effect<br /><br />vanDivX<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>