'Safe'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
If you seated in a closed car with a helium balloon and the car accelerates forward does the balloon move backward, forward, or neither relative to you?
Forward. The atmospheric density would increase towards the back of the car, pushing the balloon forward. Looking at it another way, the acceleration would be as if the car had been tilted back, causing the balloon to float up/forward.
Dude, like a bazillion fire trucks just passed by. What's going on here in Santa Monica?
Let it buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurn
I try to write as many questions as possible in terms of amusement park rides. Almost all of the basic Newtonian physics can be very well explained using amusement park rides.
Nilly, we had Physics Day in high school, where we spent the day at Six Flags riding rollercoasters and collecting position/velocity data.
My friend was a physics teacher, and Kings Dominon would have "Physics Day" where students went for free and had to do problems about the rides.
Er, yeah, what Vortex said.
Why does the atmospheric density increase towards the back?
The interia of the air.
I don't believe you. Air doesn't weigh anything! That's why it's air.
How come I took two years of physics in high school and never got to go to an amusement park once??
Explain why string theory is crap.
What's the chances of her daughter not being totally screwed up?
well, Howard seemed fairly normal in the beginning. Maybe now that Anna (and the cameras) are gone, he'll go back to being a regular guy.
Why does the atmospheric density increase towards the back?
Because of the acceleration forward, everything in the car would be pulled to the back, thus increasing the atmospheric density back there. (And the balloon, being lighter than air, would end up going forward as the heavier air would "win out" in the rush to the back.)
Or, think what would happen if you had a car half-full of water. When the car accelerates, the water, being denser than air, would go back and the air would go forward.
I don't believe you. Air doesn't weigh anything! That's why it's air.
But the balloon is lighter than air, and thus ways less than not anything. So it being negative, it would go forward.
(OK, that actually does make sense of you adopt the "air weighs nothing" frame of reference. It's all relative.)