Stratosphere fastest ride ever?!?

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duke said:

Am I the only one who think 740 feet and 120 MPH don't match up?? I thinbk it should reach almost or 200 MPH.

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well the top of the lift might be 740 feet up...but the drop may not be 740 feet.  They probably say 740 feet to get people on.

As the height of a coaster (or any object) increases, the speed of the drop doesn't increase at the same rate.  That is why you only get smaller increases in speed with increases in height.  I think another post here or at danimation (yuck) someone used a physics formula to calculate the height needed for a 200mph cooaster, and the answer was over 1200 feet!  And that's without incorporating friction from wind and track into the equation.

The equation behind this is simple, but it has been a long time since physics, so I am just going to let someone else do the math.

Damn that picture looks cool

One of these days I'm going to make RideMan write an article for us with that whole gravity formula so we can demonstrate that speed doesn't exponentially increase with height. 120 mph sounds pretty reasonable for that height, I should say.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

Perhaps the easiest way to think of the speeding of a coaster is like this. Well, many people say "If MF Goes 93mph, that means a 410ft coaster goes 140mph..." well, think about it this way.

If a coaster is going 93mph after a 310ft drop, and has another 100ft to go, then it won't gain another 47mph, because, while there is still another quarter of the drop to go, because it has so much speed, it will go through this 100ft quicker, leaving less time to gain speed. Meaning that the longer something is falling, the less the rate of acceleration increases.

If anyone doesn't understand that, then I think you are beyond help, and an article about the matter would be nothing more than a waste of kilobytes!

Richard

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Australian

Well put mate, I couldn't have explained that any better. Exactly what I was thinking of.

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Richard Wilson said:
Perhaps the easiest way to think of the speeding of a coaster is like this. Well, many people say "If MF Goes 93mph, that means a 410ft coaster goes 140mph..." well, think about it this way.
If a coaster is going 93mph after a 310ft drop, and has another 100ft to go, then it won't gain another 47mph, because, while there is still another quarter of the drop to go, because it has so much speed, it will go through this 100ft quicker, leaving less time to gain speed. Meaning that the longer something is falling, the less the rate of acceleration increases.
If anyone doesn't understand that, then I think you are beyond help, and an article about the matter would be nothing more than a waste of kilobytes!
Richard
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Australian

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I hate to break it to you, but that isn't right. The "rate of acceleration" of any falling body would be a' or x''' where a is acceration and x is position. Primes of course denote time derivative. Unfortunately in a gravitational field near the surface (near meaning tens of miles or less) acceleration is constant, so the "rate of acceleration" is always zero, not less as you fall. So perhaps some sort of article wouldn't be a waste of time. Your acceleration is always constant in a fall, it is your velocity that increases with time. The "problem" is that your POSITION increases with the SQUARE of time.
Also air resistance is proportional to velocity, which is why everything has a "terminal" velocity. The proposed fishhook has a large frontal area, and is boxy, which means a high coefficient of drag. I wouldn't be suprised if the stratosphere coaster is flirting with its terminal velocity at 120mph, though without hard data I can't calculate the terminal velocity.
 
It just bothers me to see such arrogance when the one being so condescending is equally ignorant. If I have offended I am sorry.