"stone thrown west goes further"

Chris L Peterson wrote:
Agreed, there are a few ways of looking at it. I am picturing the motion
of the stone from the Sun, where "east" is the direction the Earth is
moving in its orbit.

OK.

And I don't think it matters where you are on the
Earth, including the poles. The stone should always land farther along
the path of the Earth's orbit.

I didn't interpret your heliocentric correctly, so ignore my comment.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

nytecam wrote:
This statement appears in club magazine but can this be true?

"Because of the earth's rotation an object thrown west goes further".

Not for me. When I throw a stone, it's always in the afternoon, since
who gets up early to throw stones. Therefore when I throw stones west,
it's into the setting sun. Therefore I'm blinded by the light, and
invariably throw the stone into the ground about 30 feet off. If I just
turn around and throw east, I don't have that problem and the stone goes
considerably farther.

Don't any off you guys know how to properly analyse a simple science
excercise? Next thing, you guys will start talking about the Intelligent
Thrower vs the Baseball Pitcher (the BBP counts as an unintelligent
stone-launcher that evolved from a slippery slope.)

There is another consideration:

The rock probably achieves some elevation. So, if you're throwing in
the direction of rotation, the rock would appear to slow down as it
gains altitude, as it would start taking an orbital path of greater
circumference than along the surface of the Earth. It would appear to
gain speed (and travel farther) if thrown against the rotation.

In order to be measurable, you'd have to have one heck of an arm, and
throw in an adequately high tracjectory. Height is the real factor.

Following along, if you threw a rock westward into a canyon, its
x-component of speed would appear to slow down as it fell.

=============
- Dale Gombert (SkySea at aol.com)
122.38W, 47.58N, W. Seattle, WA
http://flavorj.com/~skysea

If you throw it perfectly straight up, it won't come down on you because
"mother earth" will move you out of the way at a very high speed. Eveyone
knows that!

Doink


"lal_truckee" wrote in message
m...
nytecam wrote:
This statement appears in club magazine but can this be true?

"Because of the earth's rotation an object thrown west goes further".

Not for me. When I throw a stone, it's always in the afternoon, since who
gets up early to throw stones. Therefore when I throw stones west, it's
into the setting sun. Therefore I'm blinded by the light, and invariably
throw the stone into the ground about 30 feet off. If I just turn around
and throw east, I don't have that problem and the stone goes considerably
farther.

Don't any off you guys know how to properly analyse a simple science
excercise? Next thing, you guys will start talking about the Intelligent
Thrower vs the Baseball Pitcher (the BBP counts as an unintelligent
stone-launcher that evolved from a slippery slope.)

Gee, when's Gerald Kelleher going to get into this thread?
Marty