If a spaceship had a flag, would it wave as the spaceship moved through space?
In: 407
It’s going to depend a bit on exactly what you meant by “wave”. Does a flag “waving” mean “sticking out from the pole instead of hanging down?” to you, or does it mean “having wiggles moving along the flag instead of the flag being smooth and straight” to you?
Because the answer isn’t the same depending on which you meant.
Let me break it down into these cases:
Case 1 – The spaceship is moving merely with momentum, not accelerating or decelerating. In this case there will be no “wave” because the flag will just hang straight down anyway. In a car going at a constant speed, the flag sticks out because air is dragging back on the flag trying to decelerate it far more than it’s decelerating the car. But remove the air and you don’t get that effect.
Case 2 – The spaceship is accelerating, AND the engine providing the thrust is smooth as silk, not vibrating the ship at all. In this case whether it counts as the flag “waving” depends on the question I asked above about what you mean by “wave”. The flag will unfurl and stick out straight from the flagpole because the ship is pulling the pole ahead of it. But it won’t have wiggles in it.
Case 3 – The spaceship is accelerating, AND the engine providing the thrust causes some vibration through the ship. In this case it will count as “waving” regardless of which definition of “wave” you’re going with. The flag will be hanging back behind the ship AND it will be wiggling because the flagpole will be vibrating and those vibrations will pass through the flag fabric as waves.
Case 3 is also why the flags on the moon had waves in them when the astronauts planted them. The rod held the flag out, and the act of planting the flag wiggled the flagpole. It eventually did stop wiggling but it had to wait for the vibrations to eventually dampen down which takes time.
Latest Answers