s this scientifically impossible?, it can “NEVER” hit the ground…can it?

Antx777 said:
Take a look at this tower...........
No hotlinking

Gilly


Now imagine someone at the top of this 1063 foot tower (lets say 1000 to keep it simple) Drops an object right from the top. Could be anything really. The object falls all the way down. However, before hitting the ground, it has to travel distance, So say half way down, 500 feet, from the bottum, it has another 500 feet to go. Ok, 250 feet from the bottum now, and half of that is 125 feet, then, 62.5 feet, 32.25, 15.625, 7.8125, 3.90, 1.95,
And less than a foot - ""0.976"". So, were does it end?, since this object Always has to travel Half way before reaching its final destiny - planet Earth....:(

~Ant
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I see what you're getting at but it's not that simple. If the object steadily slowed as it fell to earth, then yeah it would continue falling but never reach the ground. A better way to look at it is like this - Imagine you have a an object. The object is on the floor 100cm away from the wall. You push the object halfway towards the wall (50cm). Now push it halfway again (25cm). Then halfway again etc. etc. You could keep pushing it towards the wall forever but it would never get there. This works because the speed of the object is constantly being reduced. Your version doesn't work because the speed of the object is constant.
 
This is similar to something a friend once tried to confuse us with, about a fly stopping a train.

Basically, if a fly is flying in one direction horizontally and a train is moving in the exact opposite, eventually they will collide and the fly will start moving in the same direction as the train. But the fly's velocity will change from it moving in one direction to it moving in the opposite, which will mean that at one point it must be zero. As this fly is now attached (squished) to the train, does the train stop too?
 
I was reading a book featuring this theory, I've forgotton who originally proposed it. It's a very, very old "problem".

Was in "The Drunkard's Walk". Good book on probability.
 
DAnDan said:
This is similar to something a friend once tried to confuse us with, about a fly stopping a train.

Basically, if a fly is flying in one direction horizontally and a train is moving in the exact opposite, eventually they will collide and the fly will start moving in the same direction as the train. But the fly's velocity will change from it moving in one direction to it moving in the opposite, which will mean that at one point it must be zero. As this fly is now attached (squished) to the train, does the train stop too?
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No because the loss in momentum of the train would have been miniscule.
 
Alex UK said:
I see what you're getting at but it's not that simple. If the object steadily slowed as it fell to earth, then yeah it would continue falling but never reach the ground. A better way to look at it is like this - Imagine you have a an object. The object is on the floor 100cm away from the wall. You push the object halfway towards the wall (50cm). Now push it halfway again (25cm). Then halfway again etc. etc. You could keep pushing it towards the wall forever but it would never get there. This works because the speed of the object is constantly being reduced. Your version doesn't work because the speed of the object is constant.
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The philosophical problem isn't with reduction in speed; rather it's with the idea that an infinitude of events must occur before the object reaches its destination, which common sense tells us shouldn't be possible.
 
DAnDan said:
Basically, if a fly is flying in one direction horizontally and a train is moving in the exact opposite, eventually they will collide and the fly will start moving in the same direction as the train. But the fly's velocity will change from it moving in one direction to it moving in the opposite, which will mean that at one point it must be zero. As this fly is now attached (squished) to the train, does the train stop too?
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No; why should it :confused:
 
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It's a phiosophical concept which in reality we know to be flawed, it's the same as taking a picture of an arrow, in the picture the arrow is still, so can you say that the arrow, at one point in it's flight, completely still?

They are both philosophicaly sound, but in reality absolute rubbish.
 
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