Archive: Business & Technology

If you dug a hole from your house all the way through the earth it would take about 42 minutes to fall all the way through to the other side of the world.  You would have to be a scofflaw to do that, though -- the law of gravity, that is.  Scientists say that because of the spin of the planet and friction you would slow down quite a bit and you probably wouldn't make it all the way through.


As a kid the conventional wisdom was that if I dug a hole all the way through the Earth I would end up in China.  I thought China would be a cool place to visit, so I thought I might try it one day.  But a unique Web site now shows me that I wouldn't end up anywhere near China.

LivePhysics.com has a number of tools that demonstrate concepts in physics -- well not just physics.  For instance one tool asks you to enter a number between 1 and 4999 and it instantly converts the number into a Roman numeral.  Do you know what number I entered when the tool returned MMXII?

Other tools can be used to recover passwords, calculate screen aspect ratios, convert Morse Code, or graph mathematical functions in 3D.  But the one that really captured my attention is the hole through the earth tool.


So where do you end up if you dig a hole all the way through the earth?  I started digging my hole in the parking lot at the Lansing Town Hall.  I ended up in the ocean just southwest of Perth, Australia.  Not China, but I've always thought it would be fun to visit Australia as well.  So I have decided to start digging.  Please don't drive into my hole if you go to the Town Hall!

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