can you cancel out a centrifugal force with another centrifugal force?

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Let’s say you’re riding one of those gravitron rides that are common at carnivals but this one is different. It’s a gravitron inside a gravitron and you’re in the inner gravitron. The outer gravitron spins clockwise and the inner gravitron along with it fast enough so that you feel 3 G’s of force. While the outer gravitron is spinning clockwise the inner gravitron begins to spin counter clockwise fast enough to simulate 3 G’s of force. Since the inner gravitron is spinning the opposite direction as the outer gravitron would you feel O G’s of force or 6 G’s of force?

Follow up question if the force is doubled. You have the outer platform spinning one direction and the inner platform spinning the opposite direction at the same speed. Relative to the earth it would look like the person riding the inner platform is standing still. Could anti gravity be simulated by tilting the ride 90° so that the rider is constantly facing the ground while feeling 6 G’s of force pushing him upward?

In: Physics

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The key thing you are missing here is this: Acceleration is not relative. It’s absolute.

If you are inside a closed box, you can determine that you are accelerating, but you cannot determine your speed. The obvious example of this is shutting the window blinds while sitting in a passenger jet, or trying to sleep while someone else is driving; your inner ear can easily tell that you are accelerating even though you have no external references.

So the force that you end up feeling would depend entirely on whether you are accelerating or not. That’s not particularly clear from how you’ve phrased the question, but if you’re saying that “Relative to the earth it would look like the person riding the inner platform is standing still” then that suggests that the person on the inner platform is going to feel the same acceleration they would if they were stationary on the earth, i.e. 9.8 mps towards the earth’s core.

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