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Re: rotating space station



At 07:23 9/29/00 -0400, Robert A Cohen wrote:

I believe it falls behind. In the rotating coordinate system, two
"apparent" forces are acting. One is the centrifugal force. The other is
the Coriolis force. (Aside: I tend to think the "coriolis force
demonstrations are misleading - they are actually coriolis plus
centrifugal force demonstrations)

So, I agree with you in this respect. However...

Is this different from what would happen on earth? Actually, the answer
is no. Suppose you throw the ball up in the air at the equator. The ball
should land behind you, I believe. One way to think about it this: R is
the ball's distance from the earth's axis of rotation. As the ball goes
up, R increases and omega decreases (conservation of angular momentum) and
thus falls behind. On the way back down, R returns to what it was and
omega returns to what it was but the ball never gets an opportunity to
"catch up" to where it was when it was thrown.

The difference between throwing a ball on earth and throwing the ball on
the space station is that on the space station delta R is larger compared
to R.

----------------------------------------------------------
| Robert Cohen

Wow! Now that's what I call the epitome of
a lucid, concise explanation.....


brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net> Altus OK
Eureka!