Weight Change for Man Flying East to West

[ceptimus]

A man in a plane flying due east above the equator at 600mph weighs 200 pounds. How much heavier will he weigh, if the plane turns around and flies due west?

 

[TenaliRaman]

hmm
wild guess
::approx 203 pounds::

-- AI

 

[Rogerio]

slightly different...

Considering g=9.81m/s² (sea level), H_plane=10km, and Earth_radius=6377km
::: 201.6 pounds :::

 

[ceptimus]

I get the same answer as Rogerio. The question asked how much heavier the man weighs, and the answer I got is
:: 1.595 pounds ::

I used Earth radius = 6378.137 km, plane height = 38,920.6 ft (this gives a flight radius of 6,390,000 metres)

I used a sidereal day of 86,164.1 seconds, and this results in a centripetal acceleration of 0.084356 m/s/s when flying east, and 0.006119 m/s/s when flying west.

 

[Moonbear]

I never considered I'd weigh more if I traveled west! There goes my plan of moving west continuously to synchronize my sleep schedule with normal daylight hours. I guess I'll just have to travel really far east

(No, this is not at all a serious response; I may be a biologist, but they did make me take some basic physics classes).

 

[tribdog]

I've always wondered something. I know Jupiter is quite a bit bigger than earth, but has a much shorter day. How much would you weigh on Jupiter taking into account this?