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Re: Today's jaw dropper



On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, William Beaty wrote:

On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, John Mallinckrodt wrote:

"travel completely around the Moon and reach the astronaut at a point 10.0
cm below its initial height."

So the moon must have an atmosphere? If perfect vacuum, wouldn't the
bullet be in orbit, and therefor NOT fall 10cm after a single orbit?

Well, yeah, a little atmosphere could do it, but what kind of challenge
would *that* be? Don't you suppose that Serway is referring to the effects
of the nonspherical components of the Moon's gravitational field. ;-)

John

P.S. BTW, for those who are as touchy (retentive?) about apostrophes as I
(usually) am, I notice that I wrote,

Here's a gem from the "How to mess with student's minds" file:

meaning, of course, to say "... students' ..."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A. John Mallinckrodt http://www.intranet.csupomona.edu/~ajm
Professor of Physics mailto:ajmallinckro@csupomona.edu
Physics Department voice:909-869-4054
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