This probably sounds stupid, but why is it easy to get up in a plane, and walk around as if you were on the ground. Then on a bus it’s harder even though the speed of the vehicle, is slower?
In: Physics
Before we go into the differences between a bus and an airplane, let’s establish some common language:
So when your standing still, you have a *location*.
If your location changes over time (i.e., you are moving), you have a *speed*.
If your speed changes over time (e.g., you are speeding up), you are *accelerating*.
If your acceleration changes over time (e.g., you are speeding up even faster than you were before), you are experiencing *jerk*.
Next step, let’s figure out which of these are harder/easier to balance when experiencing.
Location is easy. Everybody’s somewhere and that doesn’t require balance.
Speed is also easy. All it means is that you are moving constantly. In fact, since the Earth is moving, you’re always moving even when you’re “standing still”. No problem balancing.
Acceleration, surprisingly, is also easy. For example, you’re always “falling” towards the center of the Earth, but the ground is holding you up. You basically just have a constant force against the acceleration and you’re happy.
That just leaves jerk. Jerk is where we use balance. As the acceleration changes, we have to change our counter force. (e.g., lean backwards when the bus puts it’s breaks on, pull on the overhead bar when the bus takes a turn to keep from falling over)
Ok, so now let’s think about the differences between a bus and an airplane.
At any moment the both have a location, but that doesn’t really matter.
The airplane goes much faster, but like we talked about that doesn’t matter for balance.
The airplane can accelerate rapidly, but that doesn’t matter for balance either.
Finally, which one is jerkier? Well, during takeoff and landing, the airplane. It’s rapidly changing it’s acceleration from nothing full thrust from the engines. But guess what, during that time you can’t move around or balance, because it’s dangerous and difficult. But once an airplane is cruising at altitude it’s very steady. No rapid changes to the left or right. No rapid changes in acceleration. Really, nothing except turbulence and potential emergency until you land.
The bus however is constantly experiencing jerk. Every pothole, every turn, every slow down or speed up requires you to counteract the force in order to stand still.
Finally, unlike the plane where you can frequently anticipate jerk, (i.e., when you take off or land), on the bus, you often have to react and depending on your reaction speed you’ll find yourself moving around quite a bit.
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