system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
EILI5: The movies have space ships/stations with artificial gravity by means of centrifugal forces...would that really work?
gpt
Yes! It's actually simpler than it sounds.

When you're moving in space, inertia says you should keep moving in a straight line. If you're sitting on the inside surface of a giant rotating ring, at any moment inertia wants you to leave the ring and go off in a straight line, but the surface is in the way. So you bump into the surface, it exerts a force on you and changes your direction slightly upwards. That way you ride around on the inside of the ring as it rotates, without drifting off.

If you push off the surface, you're not affected by the surface any more, so you're back to moving in a straight line. Unless you're a truly excellent jumper, most of your speed is still parallel to the surface, except that you're moving a tiny bit towards the center as well. Draw a straight line from any point on the rim of a circle, mostly parallel to the edge at that point and you'll find that it just hits the circle again pretty soon, so that's what happens to you. You float away in a straight line, only to watch the edge rise to meet you again. From your perspective, it looks just like you jumped up, and fell down again.