Turning Car

If you are sitting in the passenger seat of a pickup truck that makes a quick left turn, your shoulders seem to lean to the right (and all of the soup cans on the floor roll to the right).

Question Text

What causes this apparent rightward motion?

Answer Section

Select all the choices that apply.

Note: You will be awarded full marks only if you select all the correct choices, and none of the incorrect choices. Choosing incorrect choices as well as not choosing correct choices will result in deductions.

• There is a force pushing everything to the right.

• Your head (and eyes) are not in an inertial reference frame, and so things are moving for no reason.

• Your pickup truck is moving along a circular path, and a centripetal acceleration is required. Without a force to push it towards the middle, objects(your shoulders, the soup cans) will NOT move in a circle along with the rest of the pickup truck, and so will move relative to the pickup truck’s interior.

• Turning to the right forces your pickup truck to tilt, and all the cans and the shoulders shift down-hill.

Attribution

Problem is licensed under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.