When the elevator is stopped, the 2 forces are equal and reverse, and the online power is zero. However when you’re accelerating upward, the online power should even be upward. This implies the conventional power exceeds the gravitational power (proven by the lengths of the 2 arrows above). So that you really feel heavier when the conventional power will increase. We will name the conventional power your “apparent weight.”
Get it? You are on this field and it appears like nothing’s altering, however you are feeling your self being pulled downward by stronger gravity. That is as a result of your body of reference, the seemingly immobile elevator automobile, is actually zooming upward. Mainly, we’re shifting from how you see it contained in the system to how somebody exterior the system sees it.
May you construct an elevator on the moon and have it speed up quick sufficient to regain your earthly weight? Theoretically, yeah. That is what Einstein’s equivalence precept states: There is no such thing as a distinction between a gravitational area and an accelerating reference body.
A Roundabout Answer
However you see the issue: To maintain accelerating upward for even a couple of minutes, the elevator shaft must be absurdly tall, and also you’d quickly attain equally ridiculous speeds. However wait! There’s one other method to produce an acceleration: transfer in a circle.
This is a physics riddle for you: What are the three controls in a automobile that make it speed up? Reply: the gasoline pedal (to hurry up), the brake (to decelerate), and the steering wheel (to vary path). Sure, all of those are accelerations!
Keep in mind, acceleration is the speed of change of velocity, and here is the important thing factor: Velocity in physics is a vector. It has a magnitude, which we name its velocity, nevertheless it additionally has a selected path. Flip the automobile and also you’re accelerating, even when your velocity is unchanged.
So what when you simply drove in a circle? You then’d be continually accelerating with out going anyplace. That is known as centripetal acceleration (ac), which suggests center-pointing: An object transferring in a circle is accelerating towards the middle, and the magnitude of this acceleration is determined by the velocity (v) and the radius (R):
Courtesy of Rhett Allain
