2024-02-04 12:38:00
02:38 PM Sunday 04 February 2024
When you ride the ferris wheel in an amusement park, you inevitably feel it, clinging to your seat so as not to fly off. Our planet also revolves around us at a much faster speed than a Ferris wheel, so why do we not feel the Earth’s rotation?
There are two main reasons: The first is that the Earth’s rotation is smooth.
“If you’re in a car and you’re traveling at a constant speed on the highway, and if you close your eyes and ignore the road noise, you’ll feel steady,” says Stephanie Dibb, an astronomer at the International Space Center.
And if you hit the brakes frequently, you’ll know you’re moving. But because it stays at a constant speed, you feel immobile.
Just as if we were in a car, everything on Earth moves with us too. If you lower your car window onto the highway, millions of particles will hit your face with air. But inside the car with the window open, the air moves with you and you don’t feel the wind.
Likewise, our planet’s atmosphere moves at the same speed as we do, so it is constant relative to us.
Another reason we don’t feel the Earth’s rotation is gravity. “The force of gravity that binds us to the Earth is much, much stronger than the force that would cause us to fly outward,” says Debbie.
The feeling of being pulled outward after riding a roller coaster is a result of inertia. Your body wants to keep going in a straight line, but if you’re in your car, the car is trying to pull you into a circle.
The Earth’s rotation pulls everything outward in the same way, but the force that keeps everything attached to the Earth overcomes this pull.
“The acceleration of gravity is about 9.8 m/s^2 at the Earth’s surface, and this is reduced by the Earth’s rotation at the equator, where objects move at their highest speed, about 0.03 m/s^2.
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