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A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's storehouse of human knowledge
06-Apr-1984
Dear Cecil:
I hope that you can answer a question that has plagued me since childhood. If every man,
woman, and child in China each stood on a chair, and everyone jumped off their chair at
exactly the same time, would the earth be thrown off its axis? Also, if prior to jumping,
they all yelled at the top of their lungs, would we hear it here in the United States, and
how much of a time delay would there be? --Robert P., Los Angeles
Dear Robert:
Amazing as it may seem, I am actually going to answer this incredibly retarded question.
But first Uncle Cecil wishes to have a word with his devoted readers.
As you can imagine, I possess phenomenal scholarly resources. I have converted the spare
bedroom in my house into a research library containing 16 million volumes, which are
dusted twice a day by a team of robed acolytes holding candles. I have instant access via
my Apple 380S GT to all the world's data banks. Why, right here on my writing table next
to the box of spare quills I have a dog-eared copy of 16,000 Unbelievably Complicated
Physics Experiments for the Home and Garden, With Answers, which has helped
me out of many a jam.
But despite this wealth of scientific knowledge, the Teeming Millions routinely write in
with questions that not one sane person has ever asked in 6,000 years of recorded history.
As a result, my usual sources of information are useless.
Nonetheless, I try. I have been in repeated contact with the Beijing government all week
in an effort to persuade them to get all 1,027,000,000 Chinese (1980 estimate) to jump off
chairs. I have pleaded with them that will signficantly advance the cause of science.
However, they have not been cooperative.
They point out the China is a poor country, and lacks a sufficient quantity of chairs.
Moreover, many of the chairs that are available are of nonuniform height, meaning that
even if all the Chinese jumped off at the same time, they would hit the ground at
different times, thus throwing off the results of the experiment.
Finally, they point out that discipline among the Chinese people has become notoriously
lax since the Cultural Revolution, and many of the participants in the project could be
expected to be fooling around when they were supposed to be jumping. The Chinese
government suggests that instead of having the entire nation jump off chairs, I should get
one representative citizen to jump and multiply the results by 1,027,000,000. I have,
needless to say, rejected this solution as grossly inadequate.
The possibility of an actual test thus being remote, I have been forced to rely on my
considerable powers of inductive logic, to wit: given the principle that every action has
an equal and opposite reaction, when the Chinese get up on their chairs, they would
essentially be pushing the earth down in the process of elevating themselves. Then, when
they jumped off, the earth would simultaneously spring back, attracted by the
gravitational mass of one billion airborne Chinese persons, with the result that the
Chinese and the earth would meet somewhere in the middle, if you follow me. The upshot of
this is that action and reaction would cancel each other out and the earth would remain
securely in orbit.
Just for fun, however--after you've been doing this job for a while you get a pretty
bizarre notion of what constitutes a good time--suppose 1,000,000,000 Chinese, give or
take 27,000,000, were somehow to materialize atop chairs without their having to elevate
themselves thereto. And suppose they jumped off.
Having performed astonishing feats of mathematical acrobatics (requiring the entire
afternoon, I might note--sometimes I can't believe the crap I spend my time on), I
calculate that the resultant thud in aggregate would be the equivalent of 500 tons of TNT.
Not bad, but nowhere near enough to dislocate the earth, which weighs 6 sextillion, 588
quintillion short tons. I refuse to even discuss what would happen if all the Chinese
yelled at the top of their lungs.
--CECIL ADAMS
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