A friend and I have been having an ongoing debate for years. We were at a pub on a wharf, watching shipping container ships and cruise ships come into dock, and he posed the question. With no wind, no waves, perfect conditions, could he move the ship at all?
In: Planetary Science
The Newtonian laws are clear on it: the force you pull the ship with accelerates it proportionally to the rapport between your weight and the ship’s. If you weigh 85 kg and the cargo ship is a relatively small one weighing at around 100,000 tons, that means it outweighs you by a factor of 1.2 million, which means that any force you exert on it that would accelerate you forward by a certain value will accelerate the ship by a value that’s 1.2 million times smaller.
If the water was completely frictionless and there was no external force to impede your pulling (such as wind, water currents, waves etc.) then you could accelerate the ship to your walking speed with several days or weeks of nonstop pushing/pulling. In real life, even under the most favorable circumstances this would be impossible as even the resistance of the air and water themselves would undo most of the force you exert on the vessel.
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