on the highway I'm doing 70mph, there is a fly in my car buzzing around?

Question

how is he maintaining a speed of 70mph and flying circles around my head?

Answer 1

Fly gots skiws, yo

For the same reason you can maintain 70 even though the engine and wheels arent a part of your body. Momentum is transfered to all the objects

Answer 2

It sounds like your windows were up and the fly did not have to put any extra effort to circle your head since the air inside your car is static.

Now if your windows were down chances are that the fly would be bye bye...

It all depends on the amount of wind resistance that the fly has to encounter. For example, the reason why you don't really feel like you're moving if you're in a steadily moving car is that everything around you is static. This is only the case if the windows are up. Now imagine if you were in a car with the windows down and you were moving at a pretty fast speed (say, 70mph) and you try to toss and catch a crumpled piece of paper. You'd expect that paper ball would fly toward the back of the car. If the windows were all up, you'd be able to do it as though your car were not moving.

The idea is that for you to be in an enclosed steadily-moving 'box' and experience it as though it were at rest, the entire contents of the box must move with it. This includes the air inside. When air escapes or enters in the form of wind, it brings with it an external force into your system and makes you aware of the universe outside your box.

Answer 3

At the same time, you, your car, the road, and the entire planet is spinning at about 1000 mph at the equator, the earth is rotating about the sun at speeds measured in miles per second, etc

Its all relative.

If you are on a jet airliner, the whole thing has been accelerated to hundreds of mph, but you are inside a closed cylinder. When you get up to go to the washroom, you are only doing enough work to move relative to the rest of the plane. If you are walking towards the back of the plane, you are still rushing forward, with the plane, to your destination.

If you open a window in your car, this disturbs the isolation. A fly nearing the open window encounters different forces, and may get sucked outside.

Answer 4

He's moving along in the same isolated pocket of moving air that you are, and since air has density, when it moves so does the fly. The difference is that the fly is extremely lightweight. A heavier body, like your mother in law, will go flying toward the windshield if you slam on the brakes, but mister fly doesn't. At least not enough to notice. But a bunch of his buddies that were not so lucky to be riding in the car are now stuck to your windshield. Mathematically speaking, when the fly is circling your head, the fly is travelling faster than your car when he moves toward the front of your head, and slower than your car when he moves toward the back of your head. Only for a very short instant in front and a very short instant in back of your head is he actually moving the same speed as your car because at those two moments he is moving perpendicular to the car's direction. That reminds me of a joke. Do you know what is the last thing to go through a bug's mind when he hits your windshield? His butt. Here's another interesting tidbit of trivia. Take a helium balloon on a string in the car with you. When you accelerate, the balloon moves forward, when you brake, it moves backward. This is opposite of what you would expect. Strange, eh? It's because since air has density, it moves forward and backward inside the car as you acceleerate and brake just like your mother in law. Since the helium in the balloon is less dense than the air, when you brake the air moves forward, it displaces the balloon, and the balloon moves backward, and vice versa when you hit the gas.

Answer 5

Well you and your car and everything in it are traveling at 70 mph. So the fly is traveling at 70 mph same as you are plus whatever speed he is traveling at. Try driving in a convertible, with the top down.

Answer 6

Basic Physics: If a car is going 70, everything inside - even the air - is going 70.

Answer 7

because the air in the car is moving with you and pushes the fly

Answer 8

ok he is not b/c all the air in your car is moving at 70 MPH if the windows are closed I think it's newton's 2nd law A object in motion will remain in motion unless affected

Answer 9

Newton's law of inertia.

Answer 10

what happens to the fly if you slam on the brakes?... *smile*.......