nearest i could get....

was if all the people in china jumped off of chairs at the same time would it throw the planet off of its orbit? first of all china is a poor country and doesnt have sufficient chairs and furthermore, many of the chairs that are available are of nonuniform height, meaning that even if all the Chinese jumped off at the same time, they'd hit the ground at different times, throwing off the results. the internet also points out that, discipline among the chinese people has become lax since the cultural revolution, and that many of the participants in the project would likely be distracted when they were supposed to be jumping. the chinese government suggests that instead of having the entire nation jump off chairs, i should get one representative citizen to jump and multiply the results by 1,027,000,000. i have, needless to say, rejected this solution as grossly inadequate.

the possibility of an actual test thus being remote, I've been forced to work this out on the basis of reason alone, to wit: given that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, when the Chinese get up on their chairs, they'd essentially be pushing the earth down in the process of elevating themselves. Then, when they jumped off, the earth would simultaneously spring back, attracted by the gravitational mass of one billion airborne Chinese, with the result that the Chinese and the earth would meet somewhere in the middle, if you follow me. The upshot of this is that action and reaction would cancel each other out and the earth would remain in orbit.

Just for fun, let us suppose 1,000,000,000 Chinese, give or take 27,000,000, were somehow to materialize atop chairs without their having to elevate themselves thereto. And suppose they jumped off.

it is calculated that the resultant thud in aggregate would be the equivalent of 500 tons of TNT. Not bad, but nowhere near enough to dislocate the earth, which weighs 6 sextillion, 588 quintillion short tons.

Posted By: Tombs, Nov 17, 21:22:11