Curious About The Action Of G’s?
I’m curious about the effect of G’s on a “pod”, like on the centrifuge for nasa training, that pod the astronauts sit in
at 4 G’s what would the angle of tilt upward be
if it were hanging at a stand still, would be 0
if it were all the way out, would be 90 (although i dont think it could ever quite reach 90)
Well the total gravitational force would be 1g downwards and 4g’s outwards from the center of the centrifuge. If you write that out as a triangle you’d find that the ‘angle of gravity’ would deviate about 76 degrees from vertical. Or in other words, if you wanted to stand up straight (i.e. have the total force acting in the direction of your body) you’d have to be making an angle of about 14 degrees with the horizontal, which is (probably) less than the angle you’d make when doing a push up.
EDIT: I used trigonometry for the angles. First you start with a right angled triangle (assuming the centrifuge acts at a 90 degree angle to normal gravity). You can define the vertical side of the triangle as being 1 ‘unit’ long and the horizontal side being 4 ‘units’ long (corresponding to 1g and 4g’s in the direction that they act in). Then from trigonometry, you can say that:
tan(θ) = opposite / adjacent
Where θ will be one of the (non-90 degree) angles of the triangle, and the horizontal and vertical lengths (4 and 1) will be the opposite/adjacent sides (which one is which depends on which θ you chose). I assumed the triangle was lying in the 1st quadrant (if you think in terms of graphing), and chose θ to be the angle from the vertical, which leaves the horizontal side (length of 4) to be the ‘opposite’ side in the above formula (and so the vertical side is the ‘adjacent’ side). So you get:
θ = arctan(4 / 1) = 75.9 degrees
Or more generally:
θ (from vertical) = arctan(x)
Where x is the number of g’s the centrifuge exerts horizontally.