🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul15.202609.23833@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@taylor.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
>In article <91075@bu.edu> tvaughan@buphyk.bu.edu (Timothy Vaughan) writes:

[discussion of water bubbles deleted]
>The following chestnut, which has already been discussed here, is
>related.  Say you have a helium balloon in a car and you suddenly stop.
>Does it move towards the front of the car (like you) or to the back?

Yes, toward the back as the air (higher density air than the helium)
tries to slam up against the windshield, pushing the helium balloon out of
its way as it does so.  Under acceleration, the balloon goes towards the
front.

One of my old physics Professors, Robert Romer at Amherst College, told
our mechanics class about how he actually tried this, and showed his
child/ren (I don't recall how many) how it worked that way, braking and
accelerating, with the balloon behaving as described above.  As he turned
onto his street going home, he heard an "Oh my God!" from the back seat as
the balloon was observed leaning toward the INSIDE of the turn.  He hadn't
anticipated that one, but it's obvious in hindsight.

balloon doing the above behavior.  


-- 
--
Charles R. Tenney	tenney@med.unc.edu   | What would the UNC school of
					     | Medicine want with my opinions?
	"My karma ran over my dogma."	     | What would I want with theirs?