Understanding Centripetal and Centrifugal Force on a Rotating Platform

[Dianne Werner]

Homework Statement

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere and you stand on a rotating platform holding a spinning wheel and you tilt the axis so that your left hand is up and the right hand is down, why do you spin clockwise faster than the opposite way?(Right hand up?) It seems like since in the Northern Hemisphere the Earth spins counter clockwise, that the opposite would be true? Which way would the Torque push hardest? My experiment shows clockwise and I need to know why?

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

 

[Dianne Werner]

Do you think that you would spin faster clockwise because when the axis is tilted so that the left hand is up, the wheel would be spinning in the same direction as the Earth's rotation and the inertia or centrifugal force would push in the opposite direction?

 

[berkeman]

Homework Statement

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere and you stand on a rotating platform holding a spinning wheel and you tilt the axis so that your left hand is up and the right hand is down, why do you spin clockwise faster than the opposite way?(Right hand up?) It seems like since in the Northern Hemisphere the Earth spins counter clockwise, that the opposite would be true? Which way would the Torque push hardest? My experiment shows clockwise and I need to know why?

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

Welcome to the PF.

What reading have you been doing trying to answer this question?

 

[mfb]

The hemisphere you are on doesn't matter for reasonable parameters of the setup. Any differences you see should come from measurement uncertainties or other issues.

 

[Dianne Werner]

Are you saying that the force should be just as strong clockwise as counter clockwise?

 

[Dianne Werner]

It doesn't have anything to do with the rotation of the Earth?

 

[mfb]

The rotation of Earth is completely negligible and its effect might be exactly zero in the setup you consider.

 

[haruspex]

holding a spinning wheel

On a horizontal axis? Is the top of the wheel spinning towards you or away from you? Which way are you facing?
And what has this to do with centrifugal/centripetal?

But as mfb says, unless the wheel is huge, or spinning very fast, you will find it hard to detect an effect stronger than noise.

 

[DaveC426913]

It doesn't have anything to do with the rotation of the Earth?

Consider the size of that effect.
It takes Earth 24 hours to turn 360 degrees.
How many minutes does it take to turn just a single degree?

 

[CWatters]

Was the platform actually a chair? Is it the sort that you rotate to adjust the height?