How fast is the earth turning

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Shouldn't everyone get dizzy when the earth turns? After all, it has a pretty decent speed with this not-so-fast rotation, as the following calculation shows.

The night sky passes through the earth's rotation.
The night sky passes through the earth's rotation.

What you need:

  • Pencil and paper
  • Possibly. calculator
  • some time and patience

The earth revolves around itself - the basic data

  • The earth rotates around itself once in the course of a day, i.e. in 24 hours.
  • The further out the co-rotating people are, the greater the speed with which they move. The most extreme case in a rotation at the equator. You know this case from curves and carousels.
  • The earth's radius is r = 6,378 km. This accuracy should be sufficient for the upcoming calculation.

"Fast" with the earth on the move - this is how you calculate the speed

  1. The speed is (with uniform movements) in the physics defined as the distance covered divided by the time required for it.
  2. In formulas: v = s / t with the abbreviations v for speed (in meters per second, m / s or kilometers per hour km / h), s for distance (in meters m or kilometers km) and t for time (in seconds s or hours H).
    3. Rotation speed of the earth - arithmetic instructions

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  3. The distance covered by a person traveling along the equator during the rotation of the earth is precisely the circumference of the earth. This is exactly the distance you turn when the earth rotates around itself. Of course, you won't notice anything - unless you look at the sky and see the sun or the sky. Stars pass by. It is a "journey" related to heaven.
  4. You can calculate this distance s = 2 x Pi x r = 40,074 km, i.e. around 40,000 km.
  5. The time for this "journey" is t = 24 hours. You calculate the speed at which you are traveling from both numerical values: v = s / t = 40,000 km: 24 h = 1667 km / h (decimal number rounded up).
  6. This is pretty quick, as you have noticed. Nevertheless, the sun and stars move past an observer very slowly, they are simply extremely far away.

By the way: Humanity is on another "journey" because the earth will move around the sun in one year. When calculating this speed, you can (as an approximation) assume a circular orbit. Here, too, the path is the circumference and this time the time is 365 days, which still have to be converted into hours. Here, too, the fellow traveler travels pretty quickly.

And the sun is also traveling with its planets: it is located on an outer spiral arm in the Milky Way, which also rotates.

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