Mechanical Equivalent of an Inductor is a Mass

The mechanical analog of an inductor is a mass. The voltage across an inductor corresponds to the force used to accelerate a mass . The current through in the inductor corresponds to the velocity of the mass. Thus, Eq.(E.4) corresponds to Newton's second law for an ideal mass:

where denotes the acceleration of the mass .

From the defining equation for an inductor [Eq.(E.3)], we see that the stored magnetic flux in an inductor is analogous to mass times velocity, or momentum. In other words, magnetic flux may be regarded as electric-charge momentum.

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written by Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.