740ft drop @ 120mph = ?

Given the few details of the proposed Strat coaster, can any brainiacs out there calculate about how many seconds it would take a car to drop 740ft @ 120mph? Any educated guesses on total seconds of freefall? Just curious, I love airtime, seems like this would be a dream ride. But if it's too long, might be too much for the GP to handle. Might be the first ride since the infamous CB Cyclone that'll need a nurse in the station to revive people!

*** This post was edited by Draco on 8/30/2001. ***

...enter Rideman?

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Here's my question:

I don't know if I missed something, but with a 300 foot drop the train goes 93, how are they getting 120 for something more than twice as tall?
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Well think of it this way..... a man jumping out of an airplane at 10,000 travels downward at about 150 mph because he is in freefall mode and everything in freefall mode falls down at the same speed. There is a formula that is used to calcualate freefall mode and the rate of drop.... i don't know the formula off of my head.

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Dave

PhantomTails, gravity has it's ways. It's not like a 700 ft object would go twice as fast as a 350 ft object. Friction and resistance and maybe even speed control has an effect on it. I would'nt be surprised if somehow they controlled the drop speed of this ride being so high.
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George Dubya: A Master in the art of "Golfery"
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Terminal Velocity. It is around a 128 mph I thought??? It's the speed limit at which things can fall.
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We did a lot with this type of stuff in school this year. Only thing is that we found out this stuff for a ball bearing not a coaster train.

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"Roller Coaster favorite ride , let me kiss you one last time" Blink 182

is this a coaster or a free fall

It looks to me like its some sort of updated Demon Drop. which would be cool, definitely a hell of a lot of airtime. the thing im wondering about is will it have mulitiple trains and how will it get back up to the top if it does or will they unload people on the bottom.

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A 740 foot freefall has a theoretical max speed of 148 mph. The drop would last 6.8 seconds.

The reason a drop twice as high does not produce a speed twice as fast is that gravity accelerates objects based on the time that they fall, not based on the distance that they fall.

A 300 foot freefall results in a theoretical max of 94.5 mph after a 4.33 second drop... adding 300 feet to the drop brings the total drop time up to 6.12 seconds producing a theoretical max of 133.6 mph

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probie

Freefall, ignoring wind resistance and friction from wheels, etc., results in 9.8m/s/s as acceleration. Approximately 30ft of drop for every second, increasing by another 30ft every second. Force of gravity. Of course, nothing actually reaches that theoretical maximum because of this "drag". A TRUE Freefall ride would fall (about) 30ft in the first second, then 60ft the next, then 90 feet, then 120 and so on until they hit the ground - except some crybabies insist on stopping before the ground, LOL. You would reach maximum velocity at some point (where increasing wind resistance stops acceleration), but probably wouldn't care by then - you'd be unconcious or worse...BTW probie, are you cheating and using a calculator or computer? Probably the latter, huh? Physics is STILL fun?!?
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rollergator - intent on improving the "guest experience" - coming soon to a park near you

It isn't cheating at all... I made a quick excel spreadsheet which allows me to enter the length of the drop and the initial speed of the coaster (if any) and it spits out the time and final velocity for me.. it isn't cheating if you understand the math behind it and are able to calculate it all on your own.

Also, gatorwoodie... just a quick correction... the speed at the end of the first second is 32 ft/sec but the distance travelled during the first second is only 16 feet since the the coaster started out at 0 and only reached 32 ft/sec at the end of the second. During the fourth second, the car would start at 96 ft/sec and end at 128 ft/sec resulting in the car travelling 112 feet during the 4th second.

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probie

Clarkbar said:
Terminal Velocity. It is around a 128 mph I thought??? It's the speed limit at which things can fall.

Terminal velocity isn't a fixed number, though. It varies based on the wind resistance (friction with air) of the item in freefall. When the acceleration due to gravity is offset by the DEceleration due to friction, you've reached terminal velocity.

This is the whole reason a parachute works. A human body in freefall really doesn't present that much surface area, and plummets. When the skydiver (hopefully) opens his chute, a MUCH larger surface area is presented, and bingo -- a much lower "terminal velocity". (That's a simplification, since the chute actually "catches" air, but the principal is the same...)

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--Greg
My page My other page And my coaster page

uh, I don't think the drop is 740 feet...I think thats just how high up it is, if you know what I mean.

Oh, ok.....I didn't think I was right about the speed, but I knew basically what it was..
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h = 1/2gt^2

225.552m= .5*9.8*t^2

t^2 = 225.552m\.5*9.8

t= 6.78 seconds neglecting air resistance

v =gt

v= 9.8*6.78

v= 66.4 m/s or 148.5 mph (Not really worring about sig figs)

v^2 = 2gh (Another Formula produces exact same speed)

Let's keep this as simple as possible. I'm no physics genius (I am in AP Physics) but the proposed ride could easily have that height and velocity. Mass is insignificant because all bodies fall at the same rate. I do not know exactly how to fit air resistance and friction in the equations so I left them off. In conclusion, the maximum speed in a vaccum that a body can reach from 740ft. is 148.5 mph. Is'nt Physics wonderful?

Unless they used a pneumatic tube and giant fans to suck the car down faster than it could fall. Now that would be a ride!

Sorry, it's Friday again...

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Yeeee Haaawwww!

ACTUALLY...

The ride is 740ft. But the drop isnt 740ft. the sketch shows a bridge-type construction over the street. Id say the ride would stay at least 40 ft from the ground. I dont know the specifics but the entire drop will not be 740ft.

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"ok everyone go ahead and pull down on your shoulder restraint so you feel nice and stuck!"

Totally interesting, thanks guys. I was thinking about how SFMM boasts about S:TE having 6 seconds of weightlessness, with a drop about 1/2 the size this ride will have, so I was guessing double the height would give 11-12 seconds of freefall. Which probably would be too much.

But S:TE generates it's zero gravity a different way, with the verticle climb, stall, then the reverse drop. So I was way off, but still a 6-7 second drop sounds totally wicked, don't think most people will be able to scream that long without running out of breath! Bring it on!

this is what im thinking, how in the hell did we go from 318ft one year ago, to 740ft next year, we went from 200ft to 300ft in 11yrs, this wont be good IMO. i think this is too big of a jump, the most experience arrow even has is what, 220ft, give or take a few feet, and now they wanna jump to over 700ft??? i shutter to think whats gonna happen.
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