Alt text:
For decades I've been working off the accumulated rotation from one long afternoon on a merry-go-round when I was eight.
Don't show this to anyone with OCD.
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
436 points (98.9% liked)
xkcd
8886 readers
91 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Have OCD, occasionally counterspin to reverse one I've done but only single spins. This would drive me crazy lol
Also related: https://www.xkcd.com/2679/
holy shit i do this string thing and i get stressed if i get too many winds around a place i don’t like
I don't have OCD but I definitely have this spinning thing. The worst thing is when you're unsure if you are short a spin or not, it's like having a sneeze stuck that won't come out
And you're certain you don't have OCD...?
We should all start spinning counterclockwise in the north and clockwise in the south to affect the planet's rotation and create a massive westward tidal wave that will finally take care of Florida.
Florida will take care of its self with how things are going.
It’s so adorable when they grow up and can take care of themselves
Fuck, I thought I was the only one.
Ultimatelly it depends on the distribution of the Human population all over the World.
It's fine to not to offset your rotations at the end of the day if there are people on the other side of the World in average rotating about the same as you do and who thus offset you rotations with their own.
Also if some people around you tend to accumulate clockwise rotations and others counter-clockwise ones, it's all fine as you're offsetting each other and ditto if your personal accumulation of rotation for each day has an equal chance to being clockwise as it has of being counter-clockwise since you're offsetting yourself over time (granted, if not in the equator you've made days a little longer or a little shorter in between, but all in all it's fine).
New reason for us to have a keep-left policy on our roads while yanks have a keep-right policy on theirs....
That's why you should only go to those larger merry-go-rounds where everything rotates in one direction and your immediate region rotates on the other.
This guy: keeps records and spends extra time.
Me: Goes back home.
Just have to be sure to use the same doors so the string/worldline doesn't get caught.
Yeah, but if you get spun around inside a room you still have problems
Three rights make a left. It's entirely possible to have an unbalanced ratio of left to right rotations in a day
Triangular grid guy: "Guess I'm going back the way I came."
Hexagonal grid guy: "What is left. What is right. This did nothing! Nothing!"
Guy on Penrose tiling: "Get me out of here!"
(In before: "You have the first two the wrong way around." Not if they're walking the edges.)
If you are doing that by car, then the cloverleaf will add to your spin, not cancel it out.
Saturated reaction wheels are a big problem
If every human on the planet just started running in the same direction, could we collectively affect the rotation of the planet like running on a ball? 🤔
Yes, we would affect the Earth's rotation. It's just by a ridiculously small amount that nobody would ever be able to measure.
Now I am wondering how many humans would it take to be measurable and significant?
The mass of the Earth is 5.972 × 10^24^, so you would need 5.972 × 10^20^ humans of 100 Kg each all turning in the same direction to make the Earth rotate 1% the other way (so about 597,200,000 trillion humans).
PS: I might be slightly wrong here as rotations have to do with angular momentum which is a bit more complicated than the linear kind because rotational inertia doesn't depende on mass alone, but the law of conservation of angular momentum does apply.
how fast do you spin them?
Whatever amount of people it'd take, the effect we'd make, would cancel at break.
I was going to say a similar thing, how are you going to get gone without canceling it out.
But also if you walked away from the equator then walked until you were directly north/ south of your home before walking home, some effect would remain.
I don't believe that to be correct, but I'm to stupid to refute you. So I'll take it as facts. Thank you for enlightening me.
It's because your return journey is closer to the axis of the earth so your action has less torque.
More