Question

Negrstc the effect of rotaion of the erath. suppos the earht suddenly stops attcating objects placed near its surface. a person standing on the earth will?

1)fly up
2)slip along the surface
3)fly around the tangent to the Earth surface
4)remain standing

Answer 1

A person standing on Earth's surface would fly off tangentially if Earth suddenly stopped exerting gravity due to the inertia of their motion at the point of gravity's cessation. Option 3 is correct.

Step-by-step explanation:

If the Earth suddenly stopped exerting a gravitational force, a person standing on Earth's surface would fly off tangentially to the surface. This is because, without gravity to provide the centripetal force needed to keep the person moving in a circle, they would continue in the direction they were moving at the moment of the cessation of gravity.

Since the Earth is rotating, they would be traveling in a straight line tangent to the point where they were last in contact with the Earth’s surface. Earth's rotation itself would no longer hold them in a circular path.

To understand this phenomenon, consider the analogy with a rotating merry-go-round. If you were standing on a merry-go-round and it suddenly stopped, you would be thrown outward in the direction you were moving just before the stop. Similarly, if Earth stopped exerting gravitational pull while still rotating, people would be thrown off in a tangential trajectory, much like the child jumping off a merry-go-round tangent to its edge.