earth's rotation?

Question

if everyone in the world ran the same way at the same time, would it effect the earth's rotation?

Answer 1

There's no way everyone would run, cause there are people in this world so fat they can't even get out of bed so that would cancel out like half of the people running.

Answer 2

If everyone did just that there could be an ultra-slight effect, but as they slowed down the effect would reverse. There is likely more effect on the rotation by sending objects into the solar system, away from the gravity field of the earth. Such objects carry with them some of the angular momentum of Earth, and that never returns.

Oh, and I realize that, technically, the 'gravity field' of the
Earth doesn't stop, but once the spacecraft leaves the vicinity of Earth that part of the angular momentum is gone.

Answer 3

This sort of question can only come from a city boy, surely.

If you do any travelling at all, you notice that the world is mostly empty of humans.

Then, most humans only inhabit the tiny bottom level of a thin skin of gas around the Earth called the atmosphere. The whole atmosphere up to space is as thin as the skin of an apple to an apple, and we only scrurry around on the bottom of it.

In fact the Earth is about 20 trillion times the weight of the human race.

Not fleas on an elephant, as someone said. More like fleas on a mountain.

NOTE: you can squeeze the population of the world into a square about 32 kms (20 miles) wide.

Answer 4

Let's say an average person has a mass of 85kg. There are roughly 6,000,000,000 humans on Earth. The mass of 6 billion humans therefore adds up to about 5x10^11kg.

Total mass of Earth is about 6x10^24kg (6 with 24 zeros after it). Dividing the mass of humans by the mass of Earth gives us about 8.5x10^-14, or just under one ten-trillionth of Earth's mass.

So, if we all ran at once, yes, we would affect Earth's rotation by the law of conservation of momentum, but the effect would be miniscule and very likely not even detectable among all the other factors.

Answer 5

No. Just like if everyone on the earth jumped at the same time the earth wouldn't move. The combined mass of all the inhabitants of earth is tiny compared to the mass of the earth. We're just along for the ride.

Answer 6

I think Newton's third law of motion might be a problem. You have to push against something.

Also, humans don't weigh all that much.

Answer 7

id have to say no. the earth is massive, trillions if not quadrillions of tones. u cant change that. uve been watching too much superman.

Answer 8

It would be less than a few flees on an elephant

Answer 9

hey man, don't fu

Answer 10

we would all become very dizzy and have to see a dr seidman.