All of you fail. The hovercraft has the reactive forces of the engine that will cause it to move and not stay stationary so therefore it has to draw a line,

BUT

if you dropped your plumb bob from an anti-gravity sled would it draw a line?

 

i'll drop my plumb bob on your forehead if you hold still long enough. STFU GTFO.

 

LOL, you've got to be kidding me. We all know the equator equals 0 degrees latitude. At what degree would it leave a line?

So 2 guys are standing exactly at the equator side by side and looking north and the both jump up and down and land in the same place they left, obviously. If 1 guy takes a single step North and then they both jump again, does the 1 guy north of the equator land a quarter mile away? LOL

 

mxt_77 is suggesting that the one guy would land a few nanometers or similar from where he jumped, because his trajectory would be slightly different. And if he stayed in the air for a long enough time, the distance would become far enough for the human eye to discern. Similar to how the Coriolis effect produces cyclones, but that doesn't imply 1000 mph hurricanes.

 

Actually, I was just going on my "intuitive" idea that probably has something to do with inertia & centrifugal or centripetal forces and normal forces and all that fun stuff that I can't remember from college. At the equator, your inertia force would be perpendicular to the axis of the earth, so you'd travel in along the same path as the equator, however, if you were at the 30th parallel, that wouldn't be the case, and your 'orbit' would end up having to be like a sine wave or something, therefore you would draw a line. This logic was related to the fact that all geo-stationary satellites have to be along the equator. But, I'm sure my thought process was flawed there.

However, back to the original problem... even if you're on the equator, you would draw a line. You would be traveling at the same speed that you were traveling when you were on the surface of the Earth, but now, you're 1 foot above the surface... so you have a larger circumference to travel, but you haven't increased your speed to compensate. So, now you're travelling the same speed as the surface of the earth, but the surface of the earth has a shorter distance (circumference) to travel, so you would draw a line since you're slowly falling behind.

 

Oooh thats a good point! It would be extremely minuscule, but i think thats the whole idea of this thread.

 

This reminds me of the "Will a plane take off if it's on a treadmill"

 

The earth is rotating at a given speed along with everything on it (for a given latitude). The atmosphere is rotating along with the Earth at the same speed. What force is going to act upon you to slow you down with respect to the Earth?

 

You sure about that?

 

So, how long are you going to make us wait before you tell your logic behind the answer?