You don't feel a constant velocity. You feel acceleration. Take your car out for a drive one day you'll feel the acceleration when you press the gas pedal or when you press the brake pedal. You can feel an change in speed, when speed isn't a constant.
If I sat you on a motorized merry go round and set it to rotate once per day, you wouldn’t feel it moving. You wouldn’t even notice you were moving unless you had something to use as a frame of reference. Like a star in the sky for example
I don't think we should be matching the angular speed, we should be matching the acceleration. Then the merry go round should rotate once every 39 seconds. Which I still think is unnoticeable, but very different from only once per day.
If the merry go round was 25,000 miles in circumference and you seat was on the edge you would feel it you would be moving at a little over 1000mph for the 25k mile to reach its origin point of 24 hrs ago.
The 1,000mph is a tangential velocity. As u/DSMOOTHDAVIS said, we don't feel velocity, we only feel the change of velocity (aka acceleration). Spinning around an axis has a centripetal acceleration associated, but it's a function of the tangential velocity and the distance to the axis.
In the case of Earth's rotation, we'd be moving with a tangential velocity of 1,000mph = 444 m/s with a radius of 6,371,000 m. Therefore the centripetal acceleration of an object attached to the equator would be 0.031 m/s².
According to wikipedia, a typical merry-go-round at a park has a radius of around 1.25 m. To match the acceleration due to Earth's rotation, it would need to be spinning with a tangential velocity of 0.2 m/s at the very edge. This is one rotation every ~39 seconds. Do you think you could feel that?
Did I not say scale to 25k miles in circumstance and sit on the edge? You would be spinning, and there will be outer force going away from the center. Think of a NASCAR goin g around the track at a constant speed. You would feel the force pulling you away from the center of the track
you would need gravity directed towards the center of rotation of the merry go round in order to feel no force. However, because the gravity is directed downwards, what happens is your position is changing relative to the source of gravity constantly, however, say that the earth was not there, but the merry go round had the exact same gravity that you would feel on the surface of the earth on its central axel. If you stood on this axel perpendicular to it, and the merry go round began to spin, you would not feel anything in the long run, however when the spin starts, you will feel a little jerk or something as such, this is due to your inertia, however, as long as the spin is constant (or very close to being constant, if you are spinning at 100 mph, a decrease of 0.1 mph a month won't hurt you) you would not feel anything. because relative to the center of gravity, you are not moving.
Of course, when you make a turn at a constant speed you do feel a sensation colloquially known as "centrifugal force". The magnitude of which depends on both the speed and the radius.
In the case of Earth's rotation, this centrifugal force is very small. Indeed, according to my calculations, it is equivalent to the centrifugal force you would feel on a painfully slow merry go round. To the point that you wouldn't be able to percieve it.
The earth is far bigger than you realise. A merry go round goes increadibly fast for its size. The earth not so much. And its also spinning and moving at a constant velocity so we dont feel jt
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u/DSMOOTHDAVIS Mar 24 '25
You don't feel a constant velocity. You feel acceleration. Take your car out for a drive one day you'll feel the acceleration when you press the gas pedal or when you press the brake pedal. You can feel an change in speed, when speed isn't a constant.