RE: Physics Puzzle
July 17, 2020 at 3:06 pm
(This post was last modified: July 17, 2020 at 3:08 pm by polymath257.)
(July 17, 2020 at 1:32 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:(July 17, 2020 at 12:40 pm)Fireball Wrote: The burning, yes. But the orbit is a spiraling in over time, not straight down.
Right. It only appears to be moving straight down given my perspective as the pusher. Downwards is a term that generally means "towards the ground." But I understand we are both circling the Earth as that's happening.
The comment that confused me was Polymaths explanation where is it moves away from you but then appears to comes back only to fall back down later. Is that some kind of elliptical orbit that crosses your own at certain points?
Yes. Your push puts the battery into a slightly different orbit. There will still be the tangential velocity, but you have added a (small) radial velocity. The result is an elliptical orbit that initially goes slightly inside of yours, but then has to go back up, eventually intersecting at the point in the orbit where you pushed. There is another intersection point for the orbits, but the timing will be off.
(July 17, 2020 at 12:35 pm)zebo-the-fat Wrote:(July 17, 2020 at 8:34 am)onlinebiker Wrote: Oh well...
So it's stuck up there forever, huh?
No, would eventually fall due to atmospheric drag, probably take several years though
But that is also the case for your own orbit if you don't do corrections.
