Question

Neglect the effect of rotation of earth.Suppose the earth suddenly stops attracting objects placed near its surface.A person standing on the surface of earth will (a) fly up (b) slip along the surface (c) fly along tangent to the earth's surface (d) remain standing

Answer 1

(d) remain at rest because person is attracted towards earth because of gravitation and not because of centripetal force ... hence even if earth stops rotating gravity will remain there

Answer 2

ok earth stops attracting.. means no more gravetational pull by earth.. then may be moon or nearby planets will attract us n the person (in qsn) will start flying at avery slow speed possibly.... if in case the gravity of all heavenly body suddenly vanishes.. the person will remain where he is (remain standing).. coz there will be no external force on him to change his position..
P.S.If he tries to jump, OMG!! he'll fly n reach space n continue to fly.. LOL..

Answer 3

sorry.................. my explanation was a bit wrong..as if the earth stops attracting then the person will continue to move in a elliptical orbit around the sun......
hence relative to earth..... the man will always be at same place

Answer 4

u have said to ignore the rotion of the earth
true the earth still moves around the sun but for u to continue moving around the sun,we need some force to p[rovide the centripetal accleartion this effect on us alone will be very minimal when considering with the earth we become one of its components (attached) hence we get the right use of the centripetal force(including mass of earth's effect)
but when we are no more attched to the earth this centri force no more acts and it would make the most sense if we fly out tangentially

consider a stone tied to a string(the one providing centri force in our case the earth's attaraction to sun)
when we cut off the string the stone flys out tangentially to the direction of velocity(tangential)at the cut point
same relation here

Answer 5

@salini, that will occur only when sun too will also its gravity.. the earth doesn't provide the centripetal force in the larger system.. (which includes human beings revolving around sun).. the centripetal force is provided by the sun itself to us.. so we will fly tangentially only when sun loses its gravity too..

Answer 6

the pulls the earth that is non-negotiable but it is only when we are bound(attched)to the earth that we become its part and therefore exeperience the force but when we are not bound to the earth and (graviationla force between us alone and sun being very very weak,u cannot expect it to still provide centripetal force for u to go around the orbit
atleast this is my theorey