If a person stands on a scale in an elevator, what will happen? Of course, when the elevator starts and gets up to speed their weight will increase and then back off a bit when the elevator is at speed. But, what happens when the elevator continues upward at a steady speed? Is their weight still raised?
No, at constant speed their weight is normal (equivalent to standing still.) However as they get higher it will drop slightly as they move away from the Earth. (Negligible unless you have a 100,000 foot tall elevator or something.)
No. You know this because you can feel it. You can feel the acceleration as the elevator accelerates, then once its ascending steadily you feel normal again. Note however that there's a difference here between weight and mass. Like billvon said, your weight will reduce a little. However your mass will increase a little. The flip side of that when you're descending is called the mass deficit. Check out binding energy on Wikipedia.
There are two forces on the person in the elevator: the force of gravity and the force of the floor pushing upwards. The force of gravity depends on the person's mass and is approximately constant near the surface of the Earth. What the person perceives as his or her effective weight, however, is the force of the elevator pushing up on him or her. When the elevator is at rest or travelling at constant speed (up or down), the force of the floor on the person is equal to the force of gravity. Under such circumstances, the person feels their "normal" weight. When the elevator is accelerating upwards, the force of the floor is larger than the force of gravity and the person feels heavier. When the elevator is accelerating downwards, the opposite is true and the person feels lighter. Going to the extreme - if the elevator cable were to snap and the elevator fall freely, the person in the elevator would feel weightless (until he or she hit the bottom). Please ignore Farsight. He is just trying to confuse you.
No I'm not. I gave a legit answer. As did billvon. Au contraire, you're causing confusion by failing to acknowledge the previous posts wherein "going to the extreme" features a very tall elevator. You're two days late anyway, why bother?
You pitched your answer at the wrong level. That's something one learns over time. I'll wait to hear whether the original questioner found my post confusing. Or yours. Ok? Two days late for what?
Thank you all for your wonderful and thorough replies! I suspect binding energy and mass loss is very minimal in this experiment, so I wouldn't account for it. I would assume mass to be constant. I just wanted to understand the relationship between acceleration and gravity. Since they are presumably the same thing (we are in a constant state of 1G acceleration into Earth), I wanted to understand it's effect as you move away from Earth.
