The Earth's orbital velocity around the sun is about 29700 m/s. The mean distance to the Sun is 1.5 * 10^11 m. The centripetal acceleration to keep Earth in its orbit is v^2/r = 0.006 m/s. On our rotating reference frame of the earth, we feel it as a centrifugal force the points down at noon and up at midnight. A person weighing 100 pounds will experience a fluctuation of 1.9 oz between night and day. This is small, but should be measurable.
An interesting device to try to build would be a vertical harmonic oscillator with resonant frequency one day. The fluctuating weight caused by the centrifugal force will drive this oscillator. Can this be harnessed as a power source? If so, exactly where is the energy coming from? Are we merely slowing the day (not so bad), or crashing the Earth into the Sun (bad)? If the entire human race switched to this as a power source, what effect would it have?
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