Humans feel the sensation of movement, at least in part, due to the motion of en
ID: 3474560 • Letter: H
Question
Humans feel the sensation of movement, at least in part, due to the motion of endolymph fluid in the inner ear. When you spin this fluid is displaced due to the radial acceleration of the inner ear, and the displacement of the fluid causes dizziness. You just learned all about this in your anatomy class, which you take with two of your friends. One of them is a figure skater: the other is a diver. After class they break into a heated argument over which of them has to deal with more dizziness in their sport, but sadly neither has taken any physics and so they are unable to resolve the argument. This is where you come in. You ask your friends some questions and you learn that in your figure skater friend's most dizzying move they have to make 15 complete turns in the space of 5 seconds, and in your diver friend's most dizzying move they have to make 3 backflips in the space of 2 seconds. You measure your figure skater friend's head to be 14 cm across, and when you ask your diver friend to curl up you measure their ear to be 32 cm from the center of their body. Based on this information, who do you side with?Explanation / Answer
As given in the question, dizziness results from the motion of endolymph. The endolymph once set in motion will continue to move for some time and thus cause dizziness. This appears to correlate with angular momentum of the person. Assuming mass of endolymph to be 'M', we calculate the angular momentum for the two friends.
Angular momentum, L = 2Mr2/T; where r = radius and T = time of single rotation
For skater, radius = 14/2 = 7 cm = 0.07 m and T = 5/15. Substituting values in above equation, L = 0.09M
Similarly, for diver, radius = 32 = 0.32 m and T = 2/3. L = 0.96M
Hence, the diver must experience a much larger dizziness.
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