This is Bugging me.

[Coloumb Dude]

You know, if you throw balls (upwards) while on a moving platform, which I did; the platform had no walls or any of the sort and the ball simply moves away from me landed on the ground. I presume this was because of the wind, I am not so sure...

 

Now, I did this same test while I was inside a bullet train, and, of course the train had walls and roofs so there was no wind, and the ball simply landed on the palm of my hand.

 

Please explain, is wind resistance the sole reason why the ball was being carried away as I threw it up?

 

 

I mean, if you'd imagine. should the ball be displaced in air as I threw it up without the required force to bring it back to my palm? shouldn't it already move away from my position when I am inside or even outside a moving vehicle?

 

Or is the ball already as fast as the platform and the wind simply added more force to move it away?

 

thanks.

[swansont]

You know, if you throw balls (upwards) while on a moving platform, which I did; the platform had no walls or any of the sort and the ball simply moves away from me landed on the ground. I presume this was because of the wind, I am not so sure...

 

Now, I did this same test while I was inside a bullet train, and, of course the train had walls and roofs so there was no wind, and the ball simply landed on the palm of my hand.

 

Please explain, is wind resistance the sole reason why the ball was being carried away as I threw it up?

 

 

I mean, if you'd imagine. should the ball be displaced in air as I threw it up without the required force to bring it back to my palm? shouldn't it already move away from my position when I am inside or even outside a moving vehicle?

 

Or is the ball already as fast as the platform and the wind simply added more force to move it away?

 

thanks.

It's the wind.

 

If you are moving at a constant velocity, everything works the same as if you are at rest. IOW, all you can tell is that you and some other thing have a relative velocity. There's no way to tell if you are at rest and the other thing is moving, or you are moving and it is at rest.

[imatfaal]

The purely physical explanation is, of course, true - but might there be an added psychological factor?

 

Throwing a ball straight upwards or in a controlled manner is sometimes a bit odd - I spent a long time doing this/thinking on it when learning to juggle blind fold. It is perhaps surprising that not only does the ability to catch a ball drop (almost to zero) without visual clues - the ability to throw the ball repeatedly in a repeated manner goes on the fritz as well.

 

I wonder if when on a fast moving train you had a fixed visual environment which meant that "your vertical" was the vertical of the trains frame; wheras on the open platform "your vertical" was confused and was a compound of the moving platforms frame and the landscape outside the platform.

 

For instance if your hand moved in what our brain "knows" is a vertical direction - say parallel to a telegraph pole - but this reference is in fact in a different frame in relative motion then you would actually throw the ball slightly to the side.

[studiot]

 

say parallel to a telegraph pole

 

 

I thought telegraph poles alongside bullet train tracks were bent over sideways by the wind from passing bullet trains, like trees in the prevailing wind.

 

[Phi for All]

The purely physical explanation is, of course, true - but might there be an added psychological factor?

 

Throwing a ball straight upwards or in a controlled manner is sometimes a bit odd - I spent a long time doing this/thinking on it when learning to juggle blind fold. It is perhaps surprising that not only does the ability to catch a ball drop (almost to zero) without visual clues - the ability to throw the ball repeatedly in a repeated manner goes on the fritz as well.

 

I wonder if when on a fast moving train you had a fixed visual environment which meant that "your vertical" was the vertical of the trains frame; wheras on the open platform "your vertical" was confused and was a compound of the moving platforms frame and the landscape outside the platform.

 

For instance if your hand moved in what our brain "knows" is a vertical direction - say parallel to a telegraph pole - but this reference is in fact in a different frame in relative motion then you would actually throw the ball slightly to the side.

 

Oooh, I saw this illusion recently. Two identical rectangles, one placed portrait against a background of receding train tracks, the other placed landscape over parallel train tracks. The brain sees the visual cues of the receding train tracks, and tells your eyes that the portrait rectangle MUST be longer and skinnier than the landscape rectangle because it MUST be farther away. By a LOT, so much so that it really was hard for me to believe it when one of the rectangles was removed and placed exactly over the other.