Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby UnmarkedBoxcar » Thu Jul 16, 2015 9:06 pm

Also, one more thing, a big part of the Coriolis Effect (based on how I understand it) would come in to play if you had one person standing on the wall of our rotating cylinder/space station, and another floating in the middle. The person standing on the wall/floor could jump, toss a ball, do whatever, and the trajectory of his jump, ball would seem straight up and down (when really he is still spinning with the wall itself) whereas the person floating in the middle of the cylinder would see that person jump up, float sideways, and land a ways away from where he initially jumped. Because both that person and the spot directly under their feet from which they jumped are still rotating...etc...etc...

Okay so maybe it isn't exactly the Coriolis Effect, but it's kinda related.
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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby Gorf » Thu Jul 16, 2015 11:29 pm

UnmarkedBoxcar wrote:Okay so maybe it isn't exactly the Coriolis Effect, but it's kinda related.

Actually - it's totally the coriolis effect that you just described.
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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby UnmarkedBoxcar » Fri Jul 17, 2015 12:04 am

Gorf wrote:
UnmarkedBoxcar wrote:Okay so maybe it isn't exactly the Coriolis Effect, but it's kinda related.

Actually - it's totally the coriolis effect that you just described.


Yesss! See... initially I thought so... but then I second guessed myself, because generally the Coriolis effect seems to be discussed in terms of massive round things, like planets, moons, etc... But a spinning cylinder is kinda the inverse of that... glad to know they're both the same thing. :D
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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby Straylight0 » Fri Jul 17, 2015 12:10 am

Actually I think the guy who jumped and the ball would both move at least slightly, because as they moved up their distance from the centre of rotation would change but they would keep the same "sideways" part of their velocity. Or maybe it would simply turn under them? I think I'll make Arjanna a coriolis basketball champion as well...

Thanks for putting me onto those physics forums, I may go plague them. They might even explain why you can't get out of a black hole, never understood that. Then I'll ask what a creature made out of charm/strange quarks would be like.

But first, I'll test them by asking that if you are in a boat in a swimming pool and you throw a rock out of it, what will happen to the level of the water? :-)

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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby Straylight0 » Fri Jul 17, 2015 12:14 am

PS Pretty sure it's not like being in an aeroplane or a cruise ship, at least when they are moving in a straight line--everything is different when you're in something that is rotating, which is why this Coriolis stuff is so hard. Relativity says there is no such thing as absolute motion, you can never tell whether it is you who are moving and something else is still, or vice versa. Rotation and acceleration, on the other hand, are different--no matter what your reference frame, you can tell if you are rotating or accelerating.

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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby Gorf » Fri Jul 17, 2015 12:58 am

What makes you think aeroplanes and cruise ships travel in a straight line? Wouldn't they crash or sink if they didn't follow the curvature of the Earth?
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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby Straylight0 » Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:00 am

Like the Coriolis force on Earth, the effect of that is too smallfor us to feel--only becomes important for things like the sniping over titanic distances. In everyday life, we do not feel a force pulling us right in the northern hemisphere, or at least I don't. Likewise, the curvature of a ship or aeroplane in steady travel isn't something we tend to notice personally.

Good point though! In the philosophy of science lectures they screwed with our heads by pointing out that you cannot disprove Newton's first law because no object yet known to humans has been in a uniform state of motion unacted on by an external force, thus it isn't proper science!

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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby Gorf » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:57 am

I'm not convinced we would feel a force in the direction of rotation. On the ride above, you would feel acceleration as it got up to speed but as soon as the only acceleration you're experiencing is the apparent centifugal force (due to the constant change in direction) you'd only know which direction you're going in from the wind, hearing and doppler shift, and real gravity having some small effect on your semicircular canals.

I reckon (and it is only opinion) that in a coriolis space station, you will feel like you weigh a couple of stone, you'll be scared of jumping in case you didn't come down, and you'd avoid looking out of windows because seeing the universe and nearby planet rotating around you will make you feel sick. (I know they aren't rotating, but your body won't know that it's you doing the rotating.)
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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby Straylight0 » Sat Jul 18, 2015 10:25 pm

Talking about the fairground ride here? Think you're right, you would only feel the force of the thing you were sitting on, although that would be angled in towards the centre of the roundabout.

If it's like that enclosed rotating room I was in once, it's when you actually move yourself instead of sitting or standing still that the rotational reference frame weirdness starts... that particular ride doesn't have much opportunity for that, but if you tried walking on a big rotating roundabout, you would feel it. Although unless the roundabout was enclosed, it wouldn't feel so weird because your cerebellum would "know" you were on a rotating platform. If it was enclosed, it would start looking at the walls stationary to yourself and start getting the wrong idea. don't know what your inner ears would be doing, but it probably wouldn't feel pleasant!

Think you're right about the space-station as well. I haven't worked out the magnitiude of the artificial gravity, although I'm sure someone has. It would be weak in towards the centre where the walls of the docking bay are, anyway. I read a long time ago the size of carousel they thought you would need before it was tolerable and didn't make you sick. Expect it's pretty large! Sometimes you see stations with those huge rings around them, or pods out to the side... maybe these are built out to be luxury living areas, as the further out they were, the more gravity they would have? Think Coriolis effect would be the same, as the formula depends on the angular velocity, which wouldnt have changed.

Raises a lot of questions about people living in space for long periods. The game gives me the impression that lots of people live in stations rather than on planets, and most of those outpost stations wouldn't have gravity worth speaking of. Im sure humans can adapt to a lot mentally, especially if they're born to it, but they must have solved the problems that some with extended low gravity. Genetic engineering or medicines, I wonder?

That's an idea. Maybe people who aren't used to space stations, even ones that can approximate proper gravity, get something like sea-sickness on them...

I must have a shot at writing an action scene set in a space station's docking bay!

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Re: Seeking Clarification: Zero-G environments?

Postby Gorf » Sun Jul 19, 2015 12:18 am

It should be possible to work out the artificial gravity through so-called centrifugal force. I read somewhere that a station cavity is 2KM across, so if it's rotational period is 0.3 rpm that would give it a "gravity" of 0.1g. (I'm not near a station, so I can't time it.)

I like the idea of a fight within the station, especially a character leading their projectile shots to accommodate the station's rotation while the other does not (and therefore dies).
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