Difference Between Cars an Roller Coasters

I was wondering the other day, how come on a roller coaster, lets say Millennium Force, you can go through 93 miles per hour of wind with your eyes wide open, and you can't go with your head out of the car window without squinting going around 40 miles per hour?

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Corey
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MF-19
Top Thrill Dragster Coming Soon

I HEART OHIO

For one thign the air around a car is extremely turbulent and dense. You dont get the same squinty feeling on a boat at 50 MPH or a jet ski at 70 MPH that you do in a car at the same speeds.

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It's like a Whirlwind inside of my head!
*** This post was edited by MagnumForce 4/3/2003 7:01:28 PM ***

As near as I can tell, because of the way that air moves around cars, the local velocity by the window is higher than the speed of the car. Certainly most other vehicles seem to bother your eyes less. Riding a bicycle on a descent at 60 mph is less hard on your eyes than sticking you head out the window of a car. Coasters also seem to carry a bubble of air along with them. You will notice the wind blast in the front row much more than the other rows. Many high speed coasters are also designed to kick the air flow up and over the riders to some extent. Watch out in the rain though. In a heavy rain the drops can feel like bullets hitting your eyes in the front row.

By the way, sticking you head out the car window is not a safe thing to do.