I actually spent ten minutes of my life watching this now. That's ten minutes I'll never get back.
The question in the video is ... a plane is travelling from the equator, across the north pole and down on the other side of the planet during 24 hours. In the beginning of the trip, the plane will move with the spin of the planet and have much more speed than what it has over the north pole. What is causing the plane to slow down, and what is causing it to speed up again when going down on the other side? Also, what causes the plane to keep the curvature of the earth, and not fly out into space? Is the pilot constantly actively steering the plane down to follow the curvature and to the left to follow with the earths rotation?
The obvious answers are:
- the plane is moving relatively to the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is following the earths rotation (due to friction), so it's the atmosphere that is "breaking" and "speeding" the airplane.
- Gravity and atmosphere may seem like the two obvious answers to why the plane will follow the curvature and not fly out into space.
However, the questions "does the pilot actively need to steer to the left and down" seems outright silly from a practical point of view. A blindfolded person walking, steering a boat or (god forbid!) steering an airplane will not be able to steer straight for long, probably it won't take more than some few minutes before the person has done a 360 degree turn. A person or an autopilot navigating a plane or a ship has to constantly counter winds, waves, turbulence and currents - even the rotational direction of the propellor. A 360 degree turn during 24 hours? That's really a negligible adjustment. Same goes with the height and pitch of the airplane, it has to be trimmed and adjusted all the time. A 180 degrees change in pitch during 24 hours is also quite negligible.
"I've been playing pretty much flight simulators" - that's about the funniest "argument by authority" I've seen. :-)
The lack of difference in effect traveling in each direction & at different speeds along the variably rotating globe make it unbelievable to my logic & would require a huge leap of faith on my part to believe it. There are obvious standard answers to these questions, but they are unbelievable to my logic when I actually think about the supposed mega forces involved vs how everything actually calmly & universally works everywhere I’ve been on earth.
I like the video below more than the previous, if you want to see some autocad trig
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When I was younger it felt like adults didn't grow older. I simply wasn't able to see it; the faces of my mother and my grandparents was after all the same every day, thus it was hard to accept that they hadn't always been like that, and that they eventually would grow older.
The same can be said about the effects of the spinning earth, they are there, but they are too small to be felt - and as said also quite negligible compared to the other forces acting on the airplane. If the earth would have been spinning very fast, then yes - the effect would have been more pronounced, but the earth is not spinning very fast. Yes, the rotation speed of the airplane is big compared to the speed of the airplane, but that doesn't count, it's outside the reference frame. The airspeed - the airplanes speed through the atmosphere - is constant.
Your weight is actually less at the equator than at the pole - the centifugal forces at the equator is 0.03 m/s^2 - not much compared to the gravity at 9.8 m/s^2. Due to the centrifugal forces the earth is also not completely spheric, but a bit squeezed out around equator. This makes a person on equator further away from the center of mass, which again causes the gravity to be less pronounced. This effect is slightly bigger than the centrifugal force. Source
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I made a very similar analogy about how heavy drinking affects people recently. From day to day they feel fine compared to the last day, but they can’t accurately compare to a year or five ago.
I actually watched a proof video of that equator centrifugal math just yesterday 😆
The mathematic models & explanations work as models, but seem far removed from my experience. These are truly incredible speeds the earth is supposedly moving at & incredible rate change going north & south but no measurable physical afffect on any part of the earth nor is there any consistent measurable affect on travel despite these huge supposed physical forces.
We have highly developed & accurate senses to detect motion & balance to protect ourselves. We perceive much smaller rate changes in every other possible example. Yet the earth spins so fast it causes a bulge, but we can’t measure it on the ground or see water affected any differently near the equator.
Most interesting
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