In sci-fi with “spinning” ships to make gravity, how does someone drop something and it lands at their feet?

1.14K viewsOtherPhysics

This fogs my brain every time I watch one of these shows and I feel like maybe I’m completely misunderstanding the physics.

​

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.

​

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

25 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I have [this Tom Scott video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ_seXo-Enc) saved for just such a question. You are correct in your suspicions. A rotating ring can simulate gravity, but it will never be perfect. There would be weird artefacts like you describe, and, unless you’re acclimated to the shifting momentum, you’d be falling over a lot. The lab that he was recording from tests to see whether we really can get used to an environment like that. The physics inside that chamber gets trippy.

You are viewing 1 out of 25 answers, click here to view all answers.