[geocentrism] Re: Airplanes and the atmosphere
- From: "Gary Shelton" <garylshelton@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:35:23 -0600
Cheryl,
I have already answered your question in my previous response.
Here: //www.freelists.org/archives/geocentrism/03-2005/msg00148.html
Below I cut and paste again the relevant part:
"Relative motions" might explain your difficulty. Here goes. The reason your
airplane trip to the west from Chicago doesn't take less time according to the
other side) is that all three things involved are turning. The earth is
turning, the plane (and you) on the ground or in the air is turning, and the
atmosphere is turning. The westbound plane, though seemingly flying into a
turning earth and therefore receiving a huge benefit of time saved, is in
itself turning with the earth.
Here is what you wrote today.
"To add to my question below, the bird launching off the horse heading
against the merry-go-round's rotation should be able to hover like a
hummingbird and just wait for the third horse behind to come to it and then
land. Either way, the bird saves either fliying time or flying distance."
Please notice that you are ignoring what I said above about "all three things
are turning". Your question above intimates that you are assuming that the
hummingbird is floating completely still in the air above the carousel horse,
while nothing of the sort is true. The hummingbird is one of the three factors
that is turning.
You see, the hummingbird cannot be said to be perfectly still in your example.
Relative to an observer on the outside watching the carousel, the hummingbird
is going around and around just as fast as one of the carousel horses.
Therefore, for any given thrusted motion under its own power, the hummingbird
reaches the horse two in front of it in the same amount of time that it takes
to reach the horse two behind it.
As I said, you need to get onto both relative motions and Newton's First Law in
order to grasp what the BA-er's will say about the earth and its atmosphere and
how they turn together. This is the relative motions part.
Sincerely,
Gary Shelton
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