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
Yes, it is. That’s why rotation is measured in things like revolutions-per-second or radial speed. Saying that a ball is spinning at 10 kph, doesn’t make sense unless you’re talking about a specific point on the surface.
For example, the Earth is roughly 25k miles* at the equator and turns once every 24 hours. So the land at the equator is going about 1000 mph, but a foot from the axis of rotation travels about 6 1/4 feet in 1 whole day.
*edit: fixed uom
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