This fogs my brain every time I watch one of these shows and I feel like maybe I’m completely misunderstanding the physics.
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You’re in a “ring” ship. The ring spins. You’re standing on the inside of the ring so it takes you along with it, and the force created “pins” you to the floor, like a carnival ride. Ok, fine.
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But that’s not gravity, and it’s not “down”. Gravity is acceleration, so what keeps the acceleration going in the ring ship is that you are constantly changing your angular momentum because you’re going in a circle. Ok, so when you let go of something, like a cup or a book, wouldn’t it go flying towards the floor at an angle? If you jumped wouldn’t you look like you rotated a little before you hit the ground, because you’d, for that moment, be continuing the momentum of your angular velocity from when you left the floor and the room would continue on it’s new, ever turning, course?
Wouldn’t it kind of feel like walking “uphill” one direction and “downhill” the other, with things sliding about as the room “changed” direction constantly?
Am I just COMPLETELY missing this idea and creating a cause and effect that doesn’t exist?
In: Physics
If you were on a spinning ship and dropped something it would land at your feet on a ring ship.
It is all about frame of reference, if you are standing inside the right holding a hammer. You, the ring, the hammer and the air are stationary to each other.
The centripetal force is pushing you into the floor acting like gravity. If you let go of the hammer it is still moving sideways at the same speed as you and the ring so it will fall down to your feet.
In a smaller ring you may notice some sideways movement but this is because you are inside a circle and there is a difference of speed between the centre of the ring and the outside edge
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