I was holding a rubber band ball in my hand earlier and tossing it up in the air at about eye level. I noticed that I could see the shape of individual rubber bands on the axis of rotation on the outside of the ball but the edges of the ball were blurry. This got me thinking.. is a ball spinning slower near the axis than it is at the outer edge? Is the earth spinning faster at the equator than it is at the poles? If speed is d/t then the math makes sense to a layman like me that the ball would be rotating slower at the center and faster on the edges. Please help.
edit: holy shit. balls are fascinating.
In: 439
Every part of a solid sphere rotates at the same angular velocity. For the Earth, this means that every part of the planet, regardless of latitude, rotates at 15 degrees per hour. However, because lines of latitude are parallel, their circumference gets smaller as you move towards the poles. This means that the distance, in miles, that a degree represents gets smaller as well. So, as you move towards the poles, the linear velocity at a particular latitude gets slower so that the angular velocity remains the same.
Latest Answers