Why does nobody ever get the spinning Earth answer correctly?

Question

The reason you do not feel the Earth spinning is that it is angular velocity that makes you feel spinning.

If you spin like an ice dancer, you will get dizzy very quickly. You are rotating in a second or less. yet not one part of your body is moving at more than a few miles per hour.

Nobody feels frictionless motion at constant speed in a straight line, even at a million miles per hour. But when turning, you are constantly changing direction. It is the rate of change of direction that you feel.

The Earth is so big that from minute to minute you are travelling in a straighter line than you could draw with a ruler.

The Earth only turns once in 24 hours, whereas the skater turns once in a fraction of a second.

Drive around a small traffic island at 50mph and you will be thrown all over the place. Drive 50 mph around one of those big city loops they have in the USA and you won't feel a thing.

It is as simple as that.

Point taken about this not being a real question.

I just got in late about the real question and there were about 21 answers - all way off the mark. But who bothers to go down to answer no. 22?

Just wanted to set the record straight. The question comes up regularly on this forum, and nobody ever answers it correctly.

Answer 1

But aren't YOU forgetting the effect of gravity?

When you stand on the surface of a spinning planet, you are experiencing what some would call "centrifugal force". (Many would correctly deny that this is truly a "force" ... but from the reference frame of the person, it is experienced as an acceleration perpendicular to the ground, so we can treat it as a "force" from the reference point of view of the person.)

By definition, the effect of the force of gravity is more than enough to cancel the felt effects of this centrifugal "force" ... or, if you prefer, the downward acceleration due to gravity, is more than enough to cancel the upward acceleration due to the spinning. I say "by definition" because if this were not true, then we would not be grounded on the surface.

So it is *gravity* that keeps us from feeling the vertical component of the effect of spinning (the upward acceleration). Or more correctly, it is the constancy of that gravity, and the fact that it counteracts the constancy of the upward acceleration, that keeps us from "feeling" anything.

To put it another way ... imagine that the earth was spinning much more rapidly (more angular velocity), but its gravity was also much larger. That would feel *exactly* the same. No?

Or let's do the thought experiment a different way. You're in a room on the earth. The spin of the earth then starts accelerating, but at the same time as the gravity of the earth starts increasing. Inside the room you would feel NO vertical difference, but you WOULD feel the horizontal acceleration of the room. (You would feel like you're in a box car on an accelerating train.) If this process then stopped so that you were at a new constant angular velocity and gravity, you would cease to feel any effect ... you would be unaware that you were now moving at a much higher angular velocity.

So it is angular *acceleration* that makes you feel something. Not angular *velocity*. Angular velocity can make you feel something ... an upward acceleration ... ONLY if that upward acceleration exceeds the force of gravity.

Answer 2

Thank you for doing your part to enlighten the masses.

Answer 3

Yeah, you taught me something, but arent WE the ones who are supposed to answer YOUR question, not you answer it yourself? lol.

Answer 4

It also has to do with conservation of momentum.

Answer 5

This is a question?

Answer 6

whoop de doo for you