Why don’t we feel that the planet is spinning?

Why do we not feel the movements of the earth? – Question by Nélio Girardi, from Sentinela do Sul (RS) – Would you like to submit a question too? click here.

Barbarian, dear Sentinelese, how insensitive we are to the trends of the planet even in the literal sense, Brazil. And look what we’re talking about A ball spinning at 1,656 km/h around its axis It moves around the sun at a speed of about 108,000 km/h.

And we’re speeding up: New study shows the Earth is spinning 1.59ms faster than usual, making the days shorter.

A known visitor to this verticalPhysicist Claudio Furukawa, of the University of the South Pacific Institute of Physics, explains that we don’t really feel motions, but changes in those motions, as long as they matter.

“If we were inside an airplane flying on a cruise, and if the windows were closed and we couldn’t hear the engines roaring, we wouldn’t be able to tell if we were stopping or moving or which direction we were going,” he says.

However, if the plane suddenly changes its state of motion, we can feel it right away. If a turbulent area appears and the plane descends sharply, we will feel the object flip up – so wear a seat belt.

“In fact, according to the law of inertia, all objects tend to remain in their state of motion. And the plane and everything inside it tends to continue in the cruise regime. Therefore, if a spacecraft suddenly changes course, everything inside it continues to move in a straight line, which It gives the impression that it’s tossing upward, because it’s rising relative to the plane. Even our bodies, including our organs, will follow in a straight line as the seat “goes down,” giving that feeling of butterflies in the abdomen,” Furukawa describes.

“Similarly, when we are in a car moving to the left sharply, we feel that we are ‘driven’, forced on the right side of the car. Because of inertia, our body tends to go in a straight line while the car changes direction. This external inertial force is called the repulsive force. Central ”, continued the physicist.

Speaking of “dumping,” the fact that a planet rotates around an axis, called rotational motion, causes a centrifugal force on objects on its surface, in the same way that water from wet clothes is thrown into a washing machine when it spins. This inertial centrifugal force It is maximum at the equator and is not found at the axis of rotation (the poles). However, even at the equator, this force is imperceptible to our senses: it is only equal to about 3 thousand of the force exerted by gravity.

Furukawa continues the lesson: “Imagine an ant on a rotating chair. If we rotate the stool too quickly, the ant will probably be thrown out. But if we rotate the stool very slowly, say, a full turn every 24 hours, the ant will not perceive the rotational motion.” , because they generate very little acceleration, and therefore there is almost no centrifugal force. Therefore, even if there were centrifugal inertial forces, if they were generated by very small accelerations, they would be practically imperceptible.”

Regarding our insensitivity to the transitional motion, that the Earth makes around the sun, Furukawa explains that “inertial forces and gravitational forces have nothing to do with our bodies when compared to the gravitational force of a planet. The nature of gravity is not perceptible because it acts on everything around us and not just on our bodies.”

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