Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Falling to 88mph

There was a thread about B2TF when they used the train to get to 88mph, and if they could. This got me thinking about how to solve this problem (assuming the train couldn't do it). It seemed a simple way would just be to free fall. However I know large distances are covered quite fast when free falling.

88mph = 39.3395 m/s
freefall = 9.81 m/s^2
40m/s / 9.81ms = 4.077s
v = .5 (s + e), where v is average velocity, s is starting speed , and e is ending speed
.5 (0 + 40) = 20m/s average speed over 4 seconds = 80 meters covered in 4 seconds.
Thus you'd need to fall at least 80 meters (say 100 to be safe) to reach 88mph. Now the question becomes could you find some place to fall at least 100m from in the late 1800's. Well the two obvious choices are some sort of man made building, or a cliff. It seems both would have been suitable, and in fact I seem to remember the train falling into a ravine anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_three_tallest_structures_in_the_world

2 comments:

  1. After traveling through time, you would enter the new date falling at 88mph. You would still crash into the ground on the other side of the portal. When traveling through time, the delorian traveled at at least 88 on both entering the portal and leaving the portal.

    The train fell off the ravine after pushing the delorian. At that time the train itself was not a time machine. It was rebuilt into a time machine after falling from the ravine.

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  2. Yeah, I thought about that after posting this, but I never said you would survive.

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