Is it to do with the atomic structure or something similar, or am I completely along the wrong lines?
In: 4
Inertia is not a fundamental property of objects per se. It’s more a higher level phenomenon we recognize as a result of cause and effect.
For something to happen, something must cause it to happen. That is the basic premise. I.E. push a sofa to make it move.
In principle things are pretty straight forward: push something with mass for 10 energy points and it will move for 10 energy points.
The trick with inertia is that the mass in an object, like your sofa, is locked together (that’s why it’s a sofa and not part of your floor). So unless you break it’s structure all parts of the sofa needs to move together. That means the 10 energy points you pushed the sofa for must be distributed among all the mass in the entire sofa – giving less energy points for each individual part of the sofa to move.
A heavier sofa has more mass, and therefore more parts that require energy points in order for all of them to move together, meaning a heavier sofa will ultimately move less for the same amount of energy point pushed into it.
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