If the Earth is spinning, why can’t I feel it?

By Sara Chodosh March 1, 2018 www.popsci.com/feel-earth-spinning

Congratulations: you’re currently spinning at about 1,000 miles an hour without even
trying! That’s how fast the Earth has to turn to make a complete rotation every day. So
why can’t you feel it? Your stomach goes all topsy-turvy when you spin around on a
merry-go-round, and that’s a lot slower than 1,000 miles per hour.

You can’t feel yourself spinning on Earth for the same reason that you can’t feel yourself
moving while you’re on a train. That’s because Earth and the train are both what
physicists call “frames of reference.” Frames of reference are kind of like perspectives. A
person standing on a train has one perspective—one frame of reference—and a person
standing on a station platform has another.

If you were standing on the station platform, you would clearly see the surface was
standing still while the train whizzed by. But from the inside, you’d feel like you were
standing still while the world moved by. From either frame of reference, you feel like
you’re the one staying still. Onboard the train, the world moves. Standing on the
platform, the train moves.

The same is true of Earth and space, but at bigger scales. From inside the Earth’s frame
of reference, we can’t tell that we’re spinning. But if we viewed Earth from the frame of
reference of space, we would be able to see the twirling instantly.

And just like passengers seated on a train, we don’t have any clues—like wind rushing
through our hair—to make us realize how fast we’re going. The air inside the train (and
the atmosphere that surrounds our planet) moves along at the same speed we do.

There is one important difference between a train and Earth. When a train slows down or
speeds up, we can feel the resulting force on our bodies. That’s because of a basic law of
physics: force = mass * acceleration. Your body is the mass, and when acceleration is
zero—when the train is moving at a constant speed—there’s no force on your body. You
can’t feel it. But when the train changes speed by either accelerating or decelerating,
there’s a force (and if you’re standing up, it might just manage to knock you over).

Since most trains don’t zip around without ever changing speed, we can actually tell
we're in motion quite often. The Earth doesn’t ever slow down or speed up. But if it did,
oh boy would we feel it! And it would be the same sensation that you get on a slowing
train.

Fortunately, our planet isn’t going to suddenly slow down or speed up like that, which
means we won’t ever get that feeling that tells us we’re moving.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t observe the Earth spinning from right here on the ground.
The Sun and Moon rise in the east and set in the west because of the direction we’re
rotating in. If you set up a video camera pointed at the night sky, you’ll be able to see the
stars moving, too. From our frame of reference, it looks like those objects are sliding past
us. Remember: that’s just how we see it. From the Sun’s point of view, we’re all spinning
in circles.
KRISTEN ARNETT: A LIBRARIAN’S RESOLUTIONS FOR THE NEW
YEAR
BASICALLY, YOU GOTTA BE ABLE TO JOKE ABOUT THE BAD STUFF

January 9, 2019 By Kristen Arnett lithub.com/kristen-arnett-a-librarians-resolutions-

for-the-new-year/

Here I am, back at the circulation desk, after two magical weeks off doing nothing but
sleeping and reading and traveling and drinking beer and hanging out way too late at the
7-Eleven. I started off the morning by waking up at the crack of dawn to open the library
and groaning because I remembered all the work waiting for me: emails, reply-all emails,
email forwards, webinars, conference calls, meeting invites for meetings that should
actually be emails but instead will be two hours of everyone talking about their break.
Aggrieved, I popped some Advil, unlocked the doors, and then unloaded an actual
avalanche of newspapers that arrived during our hiatus. A patron hovered over my
shoulder as I sifted, asking about an article he’d heard about a week ago, something
having to do with politics, but what exactly? Not totally sure. By the time I’d sorted
through dozens of them, covered in gray newsprint up to my elbows, he’d decided it
wasn’t any of the newspapers we actually carry.

So I’m surrounded by piles of opened newspapers, eight o’clock in the morning, no

coffee, blistering headache, not actually helping anybody. Definitely feeling bummed I
wasn’t back home in bed. I popped a few more Advil. And I complained. And I frowned.
And I bitched about it on Twitter dot com. And I thought to myself:

“Why the hell am I doing this?”

If I can’t laugh when it comes to dealing with this stuff, I’m gonna drive myself crazy.

Sometimes… Oh buddy, sometimes it’s hard to remember. I mean, I know it’s only the
second week of January, but already it feels like it’s been years. So I have gotta get my
mind right. Damn it, it’s still a fresh new year. There’s still time to think, hard, about why
it is that we choose to do anything. So here are some resolutions I’m making about
librarianship that I plan on dragging with me through this beautiful new Year of Our Lord
2019. Because although I don’t always savor the bad parts of librarianship, there is plenty
of stuff I do love about it.

Let some shit go: Here’s the thing about library work, it’s all in the details. It’s about
finding the exact right thing, about perfectly answering the question, about finding the
correct information. Sometimes… it just doesn’t work out that way. It just doesn’t come
together. As a certified control freak, I struggle when this happens. And you know what?
It’s fine. A former director of mine (shout out to Jonathan Miller, I miss you, buddy)
once sat me down after I’d been stressed over not finding an ILL book for someone and
very kindly reminded me that, hey, at the end of the day, it’s library work. Nobody is
gonna die if you can’t answer a question. So I definitely need to remember this advice
when I start to lose it over not being able to help someone the way I’d like. Not every
search is going come up a winner, and that’s okay.

Find humor in things that would normally piss me off: There are always going to be
patrons who yell at me because they’re in a bad mood, always going to be people shoving
weird crap in the copy machine, always going to be messes to clean up in the public
restroom, food rubbed into the carpet, missing items people say they’ve returned but are
actually still in the back of the car, no money for anything so we can’t afford what
patrons need, books shoved into weird places because people want to help “shelve,”
somebody peeing on the side of the building. If I can’t laugh when it comes to dealing
with this stuff, I’m gonna drive myself crazy. Laughing reminds me that these
annoyances are a small fraction of what I actually deal with, that they are NOT the norm,
and I am going be able to look back on them later and have a funny story to tell at a party,
anyway. Life is too damn short not laugh at things. I want to laugh more this year. I have
gotta laugh at some of the bad stuff, too.

Remember that I want to help people: This is really it, this is the thing I want to take
with me into this new year. The fact that I chose this job not because of helping me, but
because I wanted to help others. That I want to do that in any way I can, and sometimes
that is going to mean doing it the way that a patron would want, not Kristen’s way. I need
to constantly remind myself that public service is exactly that, it’s service, and service
means being open to how others need assistance. I’m lucky to get to do what I do, lucky
to be able to have this opportunity to interact with humanity and get a chance to love
people, all kinds of people. I will remember that librarianship does not mean doing just
the parts I like or that I am interested in; it’s about finding ways to share information. It’s
about people.

So I’m putting away the Advil, finding a cup of coffee, and getting the newspapers
squared away. Now I can focus on other things, try and breathe a little, remember that
this is only the first day back of the new year and I’ve got plenty of time to work on these
resolutions. And hey, if I screw up, I can come back to them again and again. I can work
to be better, every day, and feel lucky that I get to do what I do.

And if I need a beer or two after work, then that’s cool, too. Cheers to that! Cheers to
librarianship. And happy new year to all of you.

Much love,

Your librarian