Imagine, if you will, that you start digging a hole from the
ground. You start digging, keep on digging and you make a hole deep enough that
the hole comes out of the other side of the earth. Now, you throw a person into
that hole. What do you think will happen?
Well, after a while, when the person reaches the core, he
will burn! So, let’s assume, for the sake of this theory, that science is somehow able to develop a suit
which can survive such a hot place and high pressure. A person wearing the same
suit is now dropped from this hole. What do you think will happen? When asked a
few people we got the response: “The person will pop-out from the other side
because the speed of the person would be strong enough to pull him out of the
other side of the earth.”
But our theory is something different. Consider the diagram
above and say that a person wearing the fancy suit is dropped; he is falling …
falling and he/she reaches the center of the earth; so far, so good. But now that the person will cross the
center, the gravity will be acting upwards for him and so, after covering about
3/4th of the distance, the person would start to fall upwards and
then after covering a bit more distance, he/she will start to fall downwards
because gravity for him/her would be working in the opposite direction. After
being in the oscillating motion for a while; there will come a point when the
person is stuck at the center, forever. (Best prison of the year!)
And there you have it, ‘Gravitational Trap
Theory.’ Now we want your opinion; what
do you think?
No you wouldn't be trapped in the centre. When u reach the centre of the earth from the top your velocity wud be maximum and wud keep on decreasing as you you fall further. It will become zero at the other end end of the earth.( This can be ssen by symmetry since your velocity was zero when u started). Again you wud be pulled back and when u reach the centre, your velocity wud be maximum (not zero as predicted by your theory) . It wud become zer at the other end of the earth. This periodic motion will keep on repeating itself and you wud be swinging up and forth. This is called Simple harmonic Motion. Your theory shud be renamed to Gravitational Swing Theory!
ReplyDelete:D Thanks a lot for your response and ya, actually we got to know that a few days after we added the post. It was also mentioned that in later classes we would actually encounter the same phenomenon, I guess that I like to day-dream a lot. :P
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