so einstein asked himself what would happen if the rope on an elevator broke
and he came to ( by pure logic) that you would float like u were in outer space cuz you and elevator is accelerating at the same rate
like they've both just been hurled off a cliff


but.... i was honestly wondering...

in some movies i saw, where the rope thing DID break and i NEVER see the people in the elevator FLOATING as the elevator screams at lightning speed down the abysmal shaft... u just see the people screaming along with the elevator... but not FLOATING

so when einstein says "floating", did he just mean that the elevator and the person were just hurtling at the same speed

if not, why did he say "float"?

u know, i've been trying to figure this out ... and i feel sort of dumb

but i just can't figure it out

which is it?


do you float? or do you just go down at the same rate as the elevator

if you do float, then they need to reflect that in the movies

either that, or i need to boycott those movies for false depiction LOL

or i need to stop thinking about things like gravity, wormholes etc.

i like thinking about wormholes

they make a lot of sense

i don't know why

but they always have

You go at the same rate as the elevator and would appear to float as gravity is pulling you both down at the same rate, that is until you hit the bottom of the shaft.

This is just the same as people in orbit around the Earth. The International Space Station (ISS) is in free fall toward the Earth, pulled by gravity and the people inside are also in free fall so they seem to be floating, weightless. But the ISS is also going 17600 mile per hour horizontally so as it falls the curvature of Earth falls away from it making a circular orbit.

brome

<<You go at the same rate as the elevator and would appear to float as gravity is pulling you both down at the same rate, that is until you hit the bottom of the shaft.>>

you said " appear" to float

so would i really be "floating" though like my feet would rise off the floor of the elevator? or would my feet stay FIRMLY PLANTED

or would i just "feel" like i was floating

like, for instance could i do a somersault in the air if i wanted to?

In the elevator you would be floating, just like the astronauts in outer space, at least for the few seconds before impact.

They have an airplane, called the Vomit Comet, that they dive into a free fall for a few minutes to give people esp. new astronauts a taste of floating in zero gravity. It's called zero gravity only because the effects of gravity are cancelled out by the free fall. There is still plenty of gravity as it pulls the plane and everyone inside toward the ground. But inside you'ld be floating around as if there was no gravity, at least relative to the plane.

wow really?

thanks brome

that's cool

thanks for answering my question

guess i don't need to cut any wires on the elevator

the V Comet sounds insaaaane!!

what does that do to a person's physiology though?

curious

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2013 07:36AM by brome.

Here's an article on the weightless airplane ride:

[en.wikipedia.org]