If a hole was drilled from 1 end of the Earth to the other end & a ball was dropped in what would happen?

Answer 1

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761556362/Gravitation.html It wouldnt fall out the other end!....Eventually it would settle in the center of the earth.

Answer 2

I've thought about this question as well. Lets assume for all you unimaginative people out there that the the ball can not melt and that the hole through the earth will remain even though the liquid core would fill it in and all that. Lets also assume that the hole is a vacuum so there is no air friction. It would seem to me that now if we dropped the ball down the hole we would have created a perpetual motion machine. The ball start to fall, continue to gain speed until it hit the center of the earth then it would slow down at exactly the same rate until it reached the same height it started with on the other side. There it would come to a stop and then begin falling again. The ball would just bounce back and fourth to opposite sides of the earth forever.

Answer 3

If you made the ball out of the same material of the drill, assumingyou didnt drill halfway, the ball would fall to where the drill melted and then melt. If some how you found a material with a much higher melting point than tungsten ( the metal with the highest melting point) it would float at the middle of the earth, because that is where all gravity pull to, the exact center of a sphere ( Since earth is not a perfect sphere you would need to drill on the equator or pole to pole to make it perfect. The ball would go to incredible speeds. That energy would push it past the center. If you had put enough energy to cancel out entropy (energy turning into heat by hitting floating molecules) it would shoot out the other end. If you didnt put enough energy into it, it would be pulled back past the center. It would then go back and forth until it was perfectly in the center of the earth.

Answer 4

Considering the earth's rotation of 1000 miles per hour at the surface, if the tunnel were straight, the ball would hit the tunnel walls.

To prevent this, the tunnel would have to curved with the curvature of its current rotational speed divided by its distance from the earth's center.

This curvature is zero at the poles, so if this hole went from North to South pole it would eventually settle at the earth's center of gravity.

For all other locations it would not fall down...since it would hit the tunnel walls. Instead it would roll down and eventually settle at the center of the earth

The heat factor can be negated by using a positron cooling agent -- which was the obvious choice for the drill bit so that it would not melt.

Answer 5

Assuming the ball actually could go all the way through the earth, it would be pulled -almost- all the way to the other side, and due to gravity pulling from the other side, it will start to be pulled back to where it started.

Each time it goes back and forth, it will end further from the earth's surface before being pulled back to the other side. Eventually, it will be stuck in the very center of the earth where the two sides of gravity pull equally.

Answer 6

The ball would eventually stop at the center of the earth, like a ball swinging at the end of a string stops where gravity pulls it.

Answer 7

If it were possible, then the ball would stop at the center of the earth, as that is the center of gravity for the planet. Gravity pulls towards the center of mass.

Answer 8

assuming ur ball could withstand very high temperatures and pressure, it would fall all the way to the center of the earth. there it would remain unless acted upon by a force greater than that of gravity exerted at the earth's core.

Answer 9

just drilling the hole would take a lifetime and if you did, the earth would blow up because of gravity's pressure on the center of the earth. (Made out of over 30,000 degree heat)

Answer 10

Ignoring the extreme heat, it would fall, accelerating to maximum velocity relative to its mass due to gravity pulling towards the center of the earth. The acceleration would make it overshoot center and then gravity would then pull it again towards the center. This would repeat until it finally levelled out and levitated at the true center of earth...where the true center of earth's gravity lies.

Answer 11

Lets assume the ball is heat resistant


It would get stuck in the center of gravity