Does the Air Surrounding the Earth Move With It?
This is one of the old puzzling questions which many a high-school student has had to struggle with to the great amusement of the teacher who asks for the information and such other scholars who have already had the experience of trying to solve it.
To get at the right answer you have merely to ask one other question. If the air does not revolve with the earth, why can’t I go up in a balloon at New York, and stay up long enough for the earth to revolve on its axis beneath me, and come down again when the city of San Francisco appears under the balloon, which should be in about four hours? If that were possible, travel would be both rapid and comfortable, for then we could sit quietly in a balloon while the earth traveling beneath us would get all the bumps.
No, the atmosphere surrounding the earth moves right along with the earth on its axis. If it were not so, the earth would probably burn up—at least no living thing could remain on it—since the friction of the surface of the air against the surface of the earth would develop such a heat that nothing could live in it.