Timeline for Why don't things rotate when they fall?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| Jul 16, 2021 at 14:01 | history | edited | Nuclear Hoagie | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 15, 2021 at 21:29 | vote | accept | Claire | ||
| Jul 15, 2021 at 15:27 | history | edited | Nuclear Hoagie | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 15, 2021 at 15:16 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | @CarlWitthoft That's why I said for any object on earth - acceleration due to gravity doesn't vary by more than 1% on the surface of the planet. For any reasonably sized, everyday object which one could feasibly drop and observe, variation in gravity and tidal forces are utterly negligible. Things do get more complicated if you have a planetary-scale object or are near a black hole, though. | |
| Jul 15, 2021 at 14:55 | comment | added | Carl Witthoft | This is not true. Gravitational force varies with distance. Imagine a 100-km long pole oriented vertically. Now you have to be careful -- distortion of objects most certainly can happen, especially if this pole is made out of some soft stretchy material | |
| Jul 15, 2021 at 13:37 | comment | added | Nuclear Hoagie | @Cheryl Right, if there was some initial spin on the object, it would continue to rotate at a constant rate (since there's no net torque), and it would naturally rotate around the center of gravity. The downward forces on either side of the CoG produce torques that cancel each other out - heavier parts of the object will feel a larger force from gravity, but they'll also tend to be closer to the CoG, and lighter parts of the object will feel smaller force but be farther from the CoG, so the torques wind up canceling out. | |
| Jul 15, 2021 at 13:31 | comment | added | Claire | Thank you! Just to make sure, is it that when things are falling, they would naturally rotate along an axis through its center of gravity, but since there are downward forces exerted on both sides of the center of gravity, the produced torques actually cancel each other out? | |
| Jul 15, 2021 at 13:06 | history | answered | Nuclear Hoagie | CC BY-SA 4.0 |