Q: If you could drill a tunnel through the whole planet and then jumped down this tunnel...

ask a mathematician dot com ^ | 4-2014 (orig 2012) | physicist

[DManA]

mostly because of all the reasons it couldn’t be done and wouldn’t work.

What? Is he going make fun of Einstein for imagining riding along with a light beam? That couldn't be done either.

[varon]

Q: If you could drill a tunnel through the whole planet and then jumped down this tunnel, how would you fall?

A: With my eyes closed!!!

[ClearCase_guy]

Cosine, it’s worth pointing out, is sinusoidal.

It can't be said often enough, if you ask me.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Clever the way the writer keeps bringing back in the “problems” of air resistance, sideways motions, etc.

[Ouchthatonehurt]

Okay then...I’ll just scratch that one off the list ;-)

[CodeToad]

“how would you fall? “

Get pushed?

[Former Fetus]

I asked this question years ago, as an extra credit question, in a Physics test. I asked the students to consider only the effect of the gravity. More than half answered that “you would fall out the bottom of the hole”, while other answers ranged from “you would not fall into the hole if the tunnel was dug parallel to the equator” to “who cares?” As the Physics teacher, it was a very humbling moment.

[Drew68]

Once you got there, you would fall right through the Earth again, oscillating back and forth sinusoidally exactly like a bouncing spring or a clock pendulum. It would take you about 42 minutes to make the trip from one side of the Earth to the other.

Cool. I'd always assumed you'd slow down and rest at the center.

[gorush]

No two vertical lines are parallel as a plumb line always points to the center of the earth.

[DannyTN]

Well one reason it won’t work, is because when your Dad comes home, the neighborhood kids scatter and your left to watch his head turn bright red when he realizes you’ve dug a 8 foot hole in the back yard. Then you have to fill it in without the help of the neighborhood kids who were helping you dig to China in the first place.

But that was a fun childhood memory.

[oh8eleven]

Cosine, it’s worth pointing out, is sinusoidal.
I wonder if seeing a psychiatrist would help?

[sagar]

Didn’t even answer the question straight. Guess the answer requires government funds for a research study.

[LegendHasIt]

Didn’t AlGore say that it was ten million degrees just a mile deep?

What sort of drill could withstand those temperatures?!?!?!?

Be hard enough to find material that would withstand the temp of the ‘run of the mill’ magma that we foolishly thought was there before Professor Gore informed us of the truth.

[cripplecreek]

Plas-magma.

[ClearCase_guy]

Guess the answer requires government funds for a research study.

Step 1 -- drill the hole.
Step 2 -- drop Obama down the hole.
Step 3 -- observe and report.

[factoryrat]

Interesting thought exercise. I read that Earth's gravity is strongest about its rotational axis, meaning that gravity is stronger at the poles than the equator. Gravity is a phenomenon solely associated with mass, and unlike electromagnetism, it seems to be unidirectional, but that doesn't explain centrifugal force. If you punched a hole through a rotating ball, in a vacuum, and allowed an object to pass through the hole, how would that object react?

[cripplecreek]

You accelerate all the way to the center then begin to slow as you pass it. You slow to the apex right at the surface on the other side.

Aside from the impossibility of it, it would be a great transportation method. Maybe it would work on geologically inactive moons.

[dalereed]

You would cheat the undertaker out of his cremation cost!

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Can we throw Harry Reid down this hole?