hey i jus have a quick question and idk if its ben asked...ok say im standing ontop of a train and its moving foward at 60 mph and i have a baseball which i through 60 mph in the same direction as the train is moving....how fast will the ball be travling?

thanks

very briefly , 120mph. (relative to the ground)

after that the air resistance is gonna slow it down.

Bare in mind standard addition of velocities works on most speeds - it would be different if things were travelling near c though.

how briefly are we talkin about? i mean like a fraction of a second or what??

how briefly are we talkin about? i mean like a fraction of a second or what??

 

Without doing any math, less than a billionth of a second. So a (very small) fraction of a billionth of a second.

The speeds are so low that there is no relativistic correction worth doing either.

how briefly are we talkin about? i mean like a fraction of a second or what??

 

 

The moment it leaves your hand it starts to decelerate due to air resistance, so if you could measure it's velocity at every possible fraction of time to infinate accuracy, which is impossible then you would probably see it's velocity drop as soon as you stoped accelerating the ball...

So it would never be traveling at 120 mph because air resistance would act upon the ball from the moment it left the thrower's hand, right?

So it would never be traveling at 120 mph because air resistance would act upon the ball from the moment it left the thrower's hand, right?

 

 

At the point when you stop accelerating it and the deceleration starts then it could be at 120... If you can move your arm at 60mph that is...

Without doing any math, less than a billionth of a second. So a (very small) fraction of a billionth of a second.

Where did you get this from ? From the expectation value of the distance to the first air molecule ?

Where did you get this from ? From the expectation value of the distance to the first air molecule ?

LOL! technically I think he is considering the repulsion of the electron cloud first.

"why settle for billions, when we can have... ....millions!" (Dr. Evil)