If a ball is thrown up inside the compartment of a running train, where would it fall?

Question

If a ball is thrown up inside the compartment of a running train, where would it fall?

Answer 1

If you threw the ball straight up from your hand, it would fall back into your hand.  The ball is moving forward with the same velocity as the train, as is your hand and everything else in the train car.

However, if you were standing outside the car while watching the ball being thrown up in the air, you would see the path of the ball as a big parabola.

Answer 2

if it is thrown straight up, it would land straight down (in your perspective of course)

since the train is running, then technically the ball isn't just thrown straight up because the running train contributes to its x-component of it's initial velocity, so to someone outside the train watching, the travel path of the ball would look like a parabola or a curve

but because you're moving at the same speed as the train, and the ball is also going at the same speed, then to you the ball would just go straight up and back straight down

another way to think about this is to think about something thrown on earth. the earth is constantly moving and spinning too, if you throw a ball up from the surface, it would land at exactly the same place because we're all moving at the same speed

Answer 3

Since the ball in moving in the same direction and speed as the train it would be the same as the train as if the train was standing still.  This assumes that the train continues moving in a straight line at the same speed.  

The person tossing the ball would have more effect since their tosses would be variable.

It would be more accurate to drop the ball rather than tossing it.

Answer 4

Behind the thrower.

Answer 5

Assuming that the train's motion is uniform, the ball would land in exactly the same place it would do so if the train were stopped.  This is a consequence of the theory of relativity.