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Flat Earth Debate / Re: Surface tension explains how oceans can curve doesn't it?
« on: June 11, 2020, 01:17:11 AM »
I think people are getting a bit bogged down here.....
Forces are vector quantities, they have magnitudes and (importantly) directions. "Push" and "Pull" are surely just defining the direction of an applied force from the perspective of the person applying said force.
Take 2 people either side of a "regular" door. One person will have to "push" to open it, the other will have to "pull". It's just grammatical convention. The door doesn't care what word you use, it just "feels" a force acting in one direction.
Take 2 people facing each other in a tug-of-war with a rope. They would both say they are "pulling" on the rope. If they both turned around (backs to each other) they might say they are both "pushing" the rope away. Either the way the rope experiences a stretching force and is placed under tension. As an aside, if they both "pulled" a 100N force onto the rope, they would both have to "push" 100N of force into the ground to stay still, and a spring balance placed into the middle of the rope would read........100N! (not 200N as sandokhan thinks - something he could easily prove to himself by experiment, yet chooses not to!).
Forces are vector quantities, they have magnitudes and (importantly) directions. "Push" and "Pull" are surely just defining the direction of an applied force from the perspective of the person applying said force.
Take 2 people either side of a "regular" door. One person will have to "push" to open it, the other will have to "pull". It's just grammatical convention. The door doesn't care what word you use, it just "feels" a force acting in one direction.
Take 2 people facing each other in a tug-of-war with a rope. They would both say they are "pulling" on the rope. If they both turned around (backs to each other) they might say they are both "pushing" the rope away. Either the way the rope experiences a stretching force and is placed under tension. As an aside, if they both "pulled" a 100N force onto the rope, they would both have to "push" 100N of force into the ground to stay still, and a spring balance placed into the middle of the rope would read........100N! (not 200N as sandokhan thinks - something he could easily prove to himself by experiment, yet chooses not to!).