So if a Helicopter.....?

Question

Stays in the air.. and just stays there all DAY. forget about gas and all that. and since we know the earth is moving... will the Helicopter move from position and end up in the other side of the world? or would he just stay there bkux of gravity?

I know it might be a stupid question.. but i have ask a lot of people and they don't seem 2 know..

sorry for any errors....

Answer 1

When the helicopter is on the ground, it moves with the Earth. There are no significant forces from the rotation of the Earth because everything is going in the same direction. When the Helicopter takes off - straight up, it still has that hundreds of miles per hour momentum it had when it was on the ground. And, the wind is also more or less going with it. So the helicopter goes around the Earth over one spot without any particular effort.

There's a great NOVA program where Feynman talks called "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out". He talks about momentum a bit. He explains that objects with mass in motion tend to stay in motion, and if at rest tend to stay at rest. This is the phenomenon. But no one has any idea why it works that way. It's not a stupid question. It's one of the basic properties of the way the Universe works. We're spending billions of dollars on projects like the LHC to figure this kind of stuff out. How stupid is that?

Answer 2

No it would not. Not only does gravity hold us to the earth, it generally holds us in position. Also, the whole atmosphere creates friction against us...so when the earth moves, the atmosphere moves, and so do we.

So no.

Answer 3

You are right, it is a silly question. Not because of the premise you want to know about, but because of the helicopter example. There are too many variables, like what the pilot does, the wind etc.

However if an object is send straight upwards and not subject to wind or any other form of interference, the earth will revolve under it and it landing position will be relative to the time period between departure and landing. This is why longer plane flights take longer to travel in one direction than the other, depending on how far they travel east/west versus north/south.

That is why space rockets are launched near the equator and in the direction of the earths rotation - they effectively are already rotating with the earth before they launch, and so can achieve orbital velocity easier.

Answer 4

That is tough one to answer because the pilot would have to compensate exactly any wind or air movement from weather conditions pushing against it.  Since the pilot has no way of knowing how much a breeze or wind is pushing against his chopper, he needs to use a reference point on the ground to maintain position and that will make the experiment useless.

Let's say he could compensate for the wind effects exactly, since the helicopter was already moving with the earth before he took off, he would moving at the same speed as the earth's rotation unless he goes straight up high enough (miles) and stay there, the earth would pass him.