Re: is free-fall an inertial frame?

[Michael Edmiston <edmiston@BLUFFTON.EDU>]

Lois Breur Krause asks:
> ... (i'm a chemist and an educator, not a physicist) but without
> air or visual clues you would have no sensation of falling?

* * * *

The sensation you would have would be the sensation of weightlessness.

Furthermore, don't we typically describe astronauts in orbit as being
in continuous free fall, and therefore experiencing apparent
weightlessness.  And haven't we watched the astronauts demonstrating
Newton's laws in telecasts from Skylab?

Doesn't that pretty much show that experiments conducted aboard Skylab
appear the same as experiments conducted on earth (i.e. in a frame that
is almost inertial).  Yes there are some very tricky experiments that
can be done that would prove both Skylab and my lab as not quite
inertial... but to three-digit accuracy (or more) inside Skylab is
going to look very inertial... and that's a free fall.

Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.              Phone/voice-mail:       419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics        FAX:                    419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department            E-Mail                  edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817