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« on: March 09, 2007, 10:00:31 PM »
I noticed that in Chapter 3 of his book, he argued for the absence of orbital or axial motion, using a model of dropping a ball on a sailing ship to demonstrate that if, in the presence of axial or orbital motion, objects that were dropped would fall behind where they were released. This doesn't make sense to me. As you hold the ball on the surface of earth, it is essentially moving through space at a the speed equivalent to the earth's movement. According to Newton's law of inertia, the ball, when released, would continue moving through space at the same rate unless it encounters resistance. On Earth, it will encounter no resistance due to the fact that the air is moving along with earth's motion, so it would stay in motion until it reaches the ground. On the ship, however, the ball would encounter air resistance and so would fall behind the ship. Please clarify this for me.