When the elevator is stopped, the 2 forces are equal and reverse, and the online pressure is zero. However in the event you’re accelerating upward, the online pressure should even be upward. This implies the traditional pressure exceeds the gravitational pressure (proven by the lengths of the 2 arrows above). So that you really feel heavier when the traditional pressure will increase. We are able to name the traditional pressure your “obvious weight.”
Get it? You are on this field and it appears to be like like nothing’s altering, however you are feeling your self being pulled downward by stronger gravity. That is as a result of your body of reference, the seemingly immobile elevator automobile, is the truth is zooming upward. Principally, we’re shifting from how you see it contained in the system to how somebody exterior the system sees it.
Might you construct an elevator on the moon and have it speed up quick sufficient to regain your earthly weight? Theoretically, yeah. That is what Einstein’s equivalence precept states: There is no such thing as a distinction between a gravitational subject and an accelerating reference body.
A Roundabout Answer
However you see the issue: To maintain accelerating upward for even a couple of minutes, the elevator shaft must be absurdly tall, and also you’d quickly attain equally ridiculous speeds. However wait! There’s one other strategy to produce an acceleration: transfer in a circle.
This is a physics riddle for you: What are the three controls in a automobile that make it speed up? Reply: the gasoline pedal (to hurry up), the brake (to decelerate), and the steering wheel (to vary path). Sure, all of those are accelerations!
Keep in mind, acceleration is the speed of change of velocity, and here is the important thing factor: Velocity in physics is a vector. It has a magnitude, which we name its pace, however it additionally has a particular path. Flip the automobile and also you’re accelerating, even when your pace is unchanged.
So what in the event you simply drove in a circle? Then you definately’d be always accelerating with out going anyplace. That is referred to as centripetal acceleration (ac), which implies center-pointing: An object shifting in a circle is accelerating towards the middle, and the magnitude of this acceleration is dependent upon the pace (v) and the radius (R):
Courtesy of Rhett Allain