You've probably seen a salad spinner before. Somehow, when it spins all the water leaves the lettuce. Washing machines do this too, and modern washing machines that spin in excess of 1000 RPM do an amazing job of getting almost all of the water out of your clothes before you even put them in the dryer.
Anyone care to take a stab at explaining how this works? You should try to explain this both from the inertia perspective (when you are outside the salad spinner/washer), and the non-inertial perspective (when you are inside the spinner, on a piece of lettuce, and subject to fictitious forces.
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When the salad spinner spins, everything in the salad spinner moves in a circle. However, because N1 states that objects try to keep a constant velocity unless acted on by an outside force, the walls of the salad spinner must exert a force toward the axis of the spinner. The salad spinner has two containers, one within the other which water can pass through. The walls of the inner container press in on the contents of the spinner and the lettuce leaves try to keep a constant velocity and move through the walls of the container. The water on the lettuce leaves, however, is able to pass through the first container and is collected in the second.
This is a perfect explanation of the inertial perspective. Can anyone explain the non inertial case? Imagine you were a lettuce leaf. How would you explain why the water is rushing past you?
One other question: why would you need a faster salad spinner if you were trying to spin off honey?
Oh, and why can't you put your wet socks in the salad spinner to get rid of the water?
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