If a tunnel could be constructed from England to New zealand,?

Question

What would happen when you jumped down it? At what point would you stop falling, or would you yo-yo, and would their be a point were you would become weightless?

Answer 1

The tunnel would have a ladder.  The tunnel would bypass the center of the earth.

Answer 2

You would get to new Zealand in something between 30 and 45 minutes (depending on how mass is distributed in the Earth.) Remeber to hold onto the sides of the hole when you get there!

On the way, you would feel no weight. However you would feel a sideways force since you would be reversing your angular momentum. (remember that the world is turning). This sideways force could be eliminated by making your tunnel "S" shaped.

Answer 3

You would be putting yourself into something like simple harmonic motion, wouldn't you?

Would correolas effect or something like that come into it?

Answer 4

You would have the same job crawling in as out.

Issac Newton

Answer 5

check this out - it would take 42 minutes to travel between any two points on the earths surface

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doci...

Answer 6

If it were possible to dig a hole through the earth; and then jump in (ignoring the effect of air friction), you would pass right through the earth, and emerge at the other side.  At the centre, there would be no gravitational attraction, because the gravity from all sides would cancel out.  But you would have developed a very high velocity at that ppoint. The velocity would be sufficient to carry you right through to the other side, at which point, the acceleration you made in falling through the hole would be matched by the earth's pull of gravity, and you would come to a halt; only to fall back through again.  In effect, without air resistance; you would form a perfect oscillating pendulum, falling from side to side like a yo-yo.  Of course, air friction would slow you down, until you came to rest at the earth's centre: a rather hot and unpleasant place to be.

Hypothetically, if it were possible to bore a hole through the earth (entirely impractical) and build an evacuated tube; the whole journey from side to side would only take about 45 minutes - cheap and quick transport, eh?

In fact the tube would not have to go through the centre; but a journey through a tangential tunnel from, say Los Angeles to London would also take only 90 minutes.

Answer 7

Depends how complex you want to go, ignoring that the earth is not exactly round and air friction will be different (because of air pressures).

You'd hid a velocity of 0 then start falling again at the opposite point to where you jumped in (on the other side), and the process would repeat.

Answer 8

Gravity pulls towards mass. So you would get pulled towards half way through (the centre) and then the gravity pulling you to the sides of the tunnel would balance out. You would have a job climbing out. yo-yo effect.

You would hit a terminal velocity not a velocity of 0.

Answer 9

Yes, it would be a yo-yo effect.

If we ignore air resistance and assume the tunnel goes right through the middle of the Earth, you would jump in, accelerating until you reached the Earth's core. Once you got past half way, you would decelerate until you reached New Zealand, at which point you would start to fall back towards the core again. The effect would go on forever unless you grabbed onto the surface when you wanted to get off.

If we take air resistance into account, you would slowly lose speed in the yo-yo effect and eventually end up in the Earth's core. However, climbing out would probably not be as difficult as you would think. The Earth's gravity is strongest at the surface, and there is no overall effect at the core.

Answer 10

I think you would stop falling when you reach the earths core and are frazzled.