0 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
This question is really hard to articulate, but I'll give it my best shot:
When an object is spinning in the vacuum of space, its particles experience centripidal force as they accelerate. All those particles are stationary relative to eachother however, so if you were to observe just the object on its own with a POV locked to the rotation of the object, you would not be able to see that it is spinning without comparing it to other objects in the universe.
Is there some "universal frame of reference" that determines which objects are spinning, and which are stationary?
Comment by Weed_O_Whirler at 24/07/2024 at 19:50 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Accelerations can be sensed, and a rotating body is undergoing an acceleration (the velocity is changing because of a change in direction). Because of that, you don't need an external frame to know you were rotating.
The classic example is imagine sitting in the back of a moving truck with no windows. If the road is perfectly smooth, you would have no way of knowing what speed you were going, but if the truck turned a corner you would be able to tell, even without looking outside.