You work for a balloon delivery service and you are delivering a single, helium-filled balloon in your car. To prevent the balloon from bouncing around on the ceiling while you are driving you have tied a string with a weight on it to the balloon. The weight is resting on the floor and the balloon is floating just below the ceiling.

When you accelerate, does the balloon stay where it is, move backward, or move forward? What does it do when you make a turn?

Assume all the windows are closed and the vents are turned off so there is no air flow inside the car to affect the balloon.

the baloons inertia, combined with the small binding force makes the balloon to remain in the same position that it ocupied. However, the car is moving and so is the weight to wich the balloon has been tied to, so, the balloon will aparently seem (for an observer in the car) to move in the oposite direction and to duck and elongate for a short period of time, after wich, itwill rise agai and ocupy the same previous position .

Posted by vije on 2004-12-29 14:58:29