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
Yes, it would. If you throw a ball to someone, that action would have a small but calculable change in the earth’s rotation. It would be vanishingly small, but real.
The same with the boat. It would be extremely tiny, but the force you applied would have a calculable and measurable impact on the boat.
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