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

[taterjay]

With Al Gore in the equation nothing is possible.

[cripplecreek]

Can we throw Harry Reid down this hole?

Nah, he'd just return in a little under two hours.

[martin_fierro]

it’s an interesting thought experiment

Damn. There go my weekend plans.

[upchuck]

Thank you Doug for posting this. Another item crossed off the bucket list.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

That was very interesting. It also explains why I got out of engineering. I’m not good at it.

[MNDude]

This guy is a real Debbie Downer!

[fedupjohn]

D=25000/3.14

[Zeneta]

There was a guy in my neighborhood that tried to literally, build a stairway to heaven.

[skinkinthegrass]

"how would you fall?
“Get pushed?"finally..the question; had been answered:
"Who pushed Huppity-Dumpity?"

Ans: the "Collisis (sp?) effect" and gravity!

[reg45]

The ultimate yo-yo.

[FatherofFive]

It would take you about 42 minutes to make the trip from one side of the Earth to the other.

42 minutes? The diameter of the earth is 7,918 miles. That is an average speed of over 11,000 mph.

[TangoLimaSierra]

With Al Gore in the equation nothing is possible.

And he would remind us that it is a million degrees down there.

[Domandred]

[gorush]

"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."

As a retired skydiver, I must question that assertion. A skydiver accelerates at first, but then acceleration slows as one approaches terminal velocity. Terminal velocity is dependent upon altitude (actually the thickness of the air mass at any given altitude) Terminal velocity is at its slowest the closer you get to the earth and presumably slower yet at the earth's center. (assuming our magical tunnel has air but no magma)

[Billthedrill]

Impossible? It isn't impossible at all! All you need is an 8000-mile-long perfectly straight tube filled with perfect vacuum and with frictionless sides, and the ability to stop the Earth from rotating for only 42 minutes. The rest (as an infuriating old math professor of mine used to say) is merely engineering.

Well, it sure used to spin up the engineering students.

Actually the entire article is a fake. The Nazis will do nearly anything to keep us from discovering that the Earth is hollow and filled with their UFOs.

[skinkinthegrass]

lookie here:http://stratus.ssec.wisc.edu/courses/gg101/coriolis/coriolis.html

[central_va]

This has been done before when I was a kid I saw a documentary on this subject:

[Hoodat]

Physicists usually ignore friction and drag when coming up with such hypotheticals. This problem is a matter of simple harmonic oscillation. As a pendulum has zero acceleration at its lowest point, the same applies to any object at the earth’s center.

[left that other site]

Damm!

I SO wanted to try this!

[amihow]

How do we know that atmosphere plays no part in falling, only mass below?