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Demonstrating free-fall weightlessness with a charged needle electroscope

2022; IOP Publishing; Volume: 57; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1088/1361-6552/ac8137

1361-6552

Josip Sliško, Adrián Estrada Corona,

Sports Dynamics and Biomechanics

Abstract Astronauts Yuri Gagarin, Gherman Titov and John Glenn, in their satellite flights around the Earth, were first humans who experienced extended period of weightlessness, although with different feelings. Soon after these history-making events, various articles appeared in pedagogical journals, proposing classroom demonstrations by which teachers could show to their students weightlessness-related physical phenomena in freely-falling systems. In this article, a new demonstration of free-fall weightlessness is described and illustrated by photos taken from its recorded video. When a charged needle electroscope is at rest, the inclined position of the needle is determined by the equilibrium of moments of repulsive electrostatic force and gravitational force. In free fall, only repulsive electrostatic force acts in electroscope-bounded reference frame, causing visible rotational motion of the needle.