Answer to Question #137751 in Mechanics | Relativity for Jatin

Question

A man suspends a fish from the spring balance held in his hand and the balance reads 9.8N. While 

shifting the balance to his other hand, the balances slips and falls down. What will be the reading of the 

balance during the balance during the fall?

Answer 1

The state of weightlessness is a state in which a material body is freely moving in the gravitational field of the Earth (or another celestial body) under the influence of only the forces of gravity.

A distinctive feature of this condition is the lack of pressure on the entire body as a whole, and on its individual parts.

Consider the condition of weightlessness reachability.

If the support moves together with the body with acceleration a, the direction of which coincides with the acceleration of free fall, then the weight of the body (determined from the vector equation $\vec N+\vec F_b=m\times \vec a$ ) in the projection on the vertical axis OZ, directed upwards, is equal to

$P=N=m\times (g−a)$ .

If $a=g$ , then $P=0$ , i.e. weightlessness occurs.

Therefore the fish scale will show N.