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
Generally, people are a bit stronger pulling than pushing. Assuming you had some ultra sturdy blocks to hold you in place, a rope tied to the ship, and pulled with all your might, you might manage a bit over 1,000 Newtons of force.
Applied to a container ship, assuming zero friction and with a mass of 165,000 tons, this would result in an acceleration of around 6 x 10^(-6) m/s^(2). This is an imperceptibly small amount of acceleration…but if you were to manage to continue to apply this 1,000 Newtons of force for a full hour (which would be a significant feat of strength), you’d get the ship moving at about 2 cm/s, which is fast enough to notice while standing still and watching carefully. In fact, the movement would probably be noticeable after about 10-20 minutes of pulling that hard.
Latest Answers