Skip to main content

Extra Credit Blog

What if everybody in the world jumped at the same time at the same location?  It is practically impossible for all people to be in the same location at the same time (mainly because there are 7.6 billion of us).  Although one may think that the mass of all the people in the world combined may be a lot (which it is), it is nowhere close to the mass of the world.  Due to the major difference in masses, everybody jumping at the same time would have no affect on the world at all.

Values that I used:
Amount of people of the world: 7.6x10^9
Average mass of a person: 70kg
Average vertical jump of a person: .5m
Mass of the Earth: 5.972 x 10^24 kg

An elastic equation will be used because momentum is conserved, which means kinetic energy is also conserved.  The equation that I used is the conservation of momentum equation.

m1v1+m2v2=m1v1f+m2v2f

To solve for the velocity of the earth I used a conservation of energy equation.  H in this equation is equal to zero because the Earth did not move vertically.

1/2m1v1^2 + 1/2m2v2^2 = mgh
1/2m1v1^2 + 1/2m2v2^2 = 0
1/2m1v1^2 = -1/2m2v2^2
m1v1 = -m2v2
v1 = m2v2/m1

I then used this same energy equation to calculate the velocity of the people.  H in this equatoin is not equal to zero, and the mass in the potential energy is m2.

1/2m1v1^2 + 1/2m2v2^2 = m2gh
m1v1^2 + m2v2^2 = 2m2gh
m2v2^2 = 2m2gh-m1v1^2
v2^2 = (2m2gh-m1v1^2)/m2
v2^2 = 2gh - m1v1^2/m2
v2 = sq. rt. 2gh - m1v1^2/m2

Putting both equations together allowed me to find the velocity of the earth.

v1^2 = (2ghm2^2/m1^2) - (m2v1^2/m1)

Solving for v1 will give me the velocity of the earth.

v1^2 + (m2v1^2/m1) = (2ghm2^2/m1^2)
v1^2 (1 +m2/m1) = (2ghm2^2/m1^2)
v1^2 = 2ghm2^2 / m1^2 (1 +m2/m1)
v1^2 = 2ghm2^2/ (m1^2+m2m1)
v1 = sq. rt. 2ghm2^2/ (m1^2+m2m1)

The mass of the total population of the world is equal to:
(7.6 x 10^9)*70 = 5.32 x 10^11 kg.

v2 = sq. rt. 2*9.8* (5.32 x 10^11)^2 / (5.972 x 10^24)^2 + (5.972 x 10^24)*(5.32 x 10^11)
v2 = (2.17589 x 10^24)/ (3.56648 x 10^49)
v2 = 7.94 x 10^-27 m/s

This means that the velocity of the Earth will only be affected by 7.94 x 10^-27 m/s after the jump.  The change is so small because the mass of the entire human population is nowhere close to the mass of the earth.  






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Physics of Black Holes...Or Lack Thereof

Isabella Jacavone To comprehend how the universe works, we must dwell into the most basic building blocks of existence; matter, energy, space, and time. NASA's  Physics of the Cosmos program involves cosmology, astrophysics, and fundamental physics intended to answer questions about the elusiveness of complex concepts such as black holes, neutron stars, dark energy, and gravitational waves. In this blog post, I'd like to elaborate on a subject that is very intriguing  to me; Black holes. And more specifically, what would happen if we got near one. A black hole is anything but a hole, but rather an immense amount of matter compacted into an extremely small area. A black hole is caused when, hypothetically, a star four times more massive than our sun collapses into a sphere no bigger than 600 square km. To put that in perspective, that's about the size of New York City. B lack holes were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which showed that when a...

Physics of Sound Dampeners and Active Noise Cancellation

Physics of Sound Dampeners and Active Noise Cancellation Sound dampening foam panels in a recording studio. ANC headphones worn by pilots and/or passengers in consumer aviation aircraft.  Acoustic treatment of soundscapes has grown alongside the sound production industry. Whether through absorption panels, diffusors and cloud panels to treat a space or headphones placed directly over the ears of listeners, acoustic treatment comes in many forms. Environments are treated acoustically to absorb excess sound to prevent sound levels from crossing a threshold above which the desired goal cannot be had. Before getting into sound dampening, we must discuss sound. Sound is produced when an object vibrates (a form of oscillation) and temporarily displaces nearby air molecules causing a wave effect as the displaced molecules collide with their neighboring molecules. Sound waves are fluctuations in pressure as the initial displacement of molecules experiences collisions that in ...

The Physics Behind the Rail Gun

Magnets and Magnetic Fields: Magnets are well known for their ability to repel and attract other magnets and various pieces of metal, but what people seldom understand are the physics at work that cause such occurrences. Magnets are everywhere, from within TV's and cellphones, to the Earth itself, and they are all producing magnetic fields. For a particle, a magnetic field can be defined to be "a vector quantity that is directed along the zero- force axis" with a magnitude equal to the dividend of the magnetic force and the product of the particle's charge and speed, and for a bar magnet, the field is best demonstrated as arcs going from one pole to the other. With that said, magnetic fields can also be created; the basic principle of electromagnetism is that the movement of electrons through a conductor produces a magnetic field in the region around the conductor. This is the fundamental principle behind the workings of the rail gun. Unlike a bar magnet, a ...