If it was possible to dig to china what would happen to my body if I fell into the hole

Question

If it was possible to dig to china what would happen to my body if I fell into the hole

Answer 1

you will swing back and forth into the hole .....

Answer 2

A free fall to the middle of the earth and stay there.  But you will probebly see magma before you see China.

Answer 3

In addition to what the 1st user answered, the same would happen if you dug a hole between any two distant points, such as NYC and London.

Here's a site where you can discover where you would actually emerge:

http://www.livephysics.com/ptools/dig-ho...

Answer 4

You would die.

However, this problem is a classic favorite for academic calculation.

Some stipulations:

IF the hole will not fill in or collapse,

IF there is no friction from the air or anything else to slow you down,

IF the heat won’t melt your ashes to a liquid (12,000 degrees Fahrenheit),

Several other IFs such as no pressure, no Earth rotation etc… THEN:

Your falling mass would experience the pendulum effect.

As you enter the hole you will accelerate but, unlike a skydiver, you will NOT maintain a terminal velocity in the region of 150 miles per hour. The lack of friction means you will continue to accelerate.

You will reach your maximum speed as you zoom past the center of the Earth at 7,900 meters per second (25,920 feet per second or 17,670 miles per hour).

Then as you move away from the Earth’s center, gravity will begin to slow you down. You will slow to a stop just at the surface of the other side of the Earth. Then you would fall back and repeat the journey.

It would take 84.6 minutes for a round trip and you end up where you started.

Gravity continues its tug and you again descend back through the hole. There would be nothing to stop the swings though the Earth, so it would continue forever.

You would be in freefall all the time, have a feeling of weightlessness and never sense the pull of the gravity that tosses you around.

Interestingly, the speed needed for an object to orbit the Earth just at the surface is precisely the same as your maximum velocity when you pass through the center. Further, the complete orbit around the Earth would last the same 84.6 minutes.

Here’s an excellent visualization:

http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets...