Faster than the speed of gravity...I don't think so.

raven

raven

Well-Known Member
CrashNet said:
One thing everyone has to keep in mind is the cab you ride in enters the drop shaft and is attached to a second moving vehicle. With the right amount of power, any object can be moved down (or up for that matter) faster than the speed of gravity. This is the case with Tower of Terror: the ride pushes the drop car down at a speed faster than gravity. This is one of the reasons why before they added the air vents the original tests blew out part of the walls of the drop shaft.
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This is true. The type of motors that are used in ToT have never been used for an attraction before. Not only do they pull the elevator up, they pull it down as well. This is why they say it's faster than gravity.

Try this next time you ride: Put a penny on your knee at the top of the big drop. If the penny floats just above your knee, you are traveling at the speed of gravity. If the penny flies above you, you are traveling faster than the speed of gravity.
 
D

Dabeast

Member
Gift shop??

Master Yoda said:
Personally I am kind of sick of all of Disney's false advertising.

On one attraction I was supposed to be taken by train to a base camp at the foot of Everest and I wound up in a gift shop.

Another promised to get me to an Aerosmith concert really fast and yet again I wound up in a gift shop.

Yet another promised to take me to Mars and where did it end? You guessed it another gift shop.

icon_rolleyes.gif
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I hear that the 5th gate may actually just be a "gift shop"...oh oh...did I say 5th gate:ROFLOL::ROFLOL::zipit:
 
sarabi

sarabi

New Member
Sorry if someone already said this, but I couldn't read this too long before the physics major in me went ballistic.

Gravity is not a speed. Gravity is a rate of acceloration. There is a cap speed for a given object free falling under the acceloration of gravity - that's terminal velocity.

No, ToT does not take you beyond your terminal velocity. You are correct, it cannot. However it accelorates you downward faster than the acceloration of a freefall because it PULLS downward in addition to gravity's pull. Because the fall is short, you don't go faster than terminal velocity. You don't even reach it.
 
raven

raven

Well-Known Member
sarabi said:
Sorry if someone already said this, but I couldn't read this too long before the physics major in me went ballistic.

Gravity is not a speed. Gravity is a rate of acceloration. There is a cap speed for a given object free falling under the acceloration of gravity - that's terminal velocity.

No, ToT does not take you beyond your terminal velocity. You are correct, it cannot. However it accelorates you downward faster than the acceloration of a freefall because it PULLS downward in addition to gravity's pull. Because the fall is short, you don't go faster than terminal velocity. You don't even reach it.
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In laymen's terms: you go fast!
 
devoy1701

devoy1701

Well-Known Member
sarabi said:
Sorry if someone already said this, but I couldn't read this too long before the physics major in me went ballistic.

Gravity is not a speed. Gravity is a rate of acceloration. There is a cap speed for a given object free falling under the acceloration of gravity - that's terminal velocity.

No, ToT does not take you beyond your terminal velocity. You are correct, it cannot. However it accelorates you downward faster than the acceloration of a freefall because it PULLS downward in addition to gravity's pull. Because the fall is short, you don't go faster than terminal velocity. You don't even reach it.
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I didn't realize that physics majors spelt acceleration different than the rest of us. :shrug:
 
Figment1986

Figment1986

Well-Known Member
Master Yoda said:
Personally I am kind of sick of all of Disney's false advertising.

On one attraction I was supposed to be taken by train to a base camp at the foot of Everest and I wound up in a gift shop.

Another promised to get me to an Aerosmith concert really fast and yet again I wound up in a gift shop.

Yet another promised to take me to Mars and where did it end? You guessed it another gift shop.

icon_rolleyes.gif
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Technically your right on all counts, but the last one.. Thats a "simulation" of the first maned trip to mars... and you first end up in advanced training before being teleported back to modern day... in a gift shop.

but you also forgot about going to your hotel room... but instead get dropped off at the wrong floor and end up sleeping in the gift shop until they kick you out; )

disneytopdog said:
He's with Ellen at Epcot solving the worlds energy problems!!!
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I hear he also helps out on a radio show for KNRG every so often around midnight :lookaroun
 
M

musketeer

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
sarabi said:
Gravity is not a speed. Gravity is a rate of accel[e]ration. There is a cap speed for a given object free falling under the accel[e]ration of gravity - that's terminal velocity.
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Not quite. Gravity is not a speed, nor is it an acceleration, it is a force. The force accelerates an object at a certain rate, but the acceleration due to gravity isn't constant. For all practical purposes on the surface of the earth, it is as close to constant as we need it to be. But the farther you get from earth's surface, the less the force becomes. And it isn't just going away (or up) from the surface of the earth, but going down also. If you were to go away from the surface of the earth (up), the foce decreases because the distance increases. If you were to dig a tunnel to the center of the earth, as you go down, the force decreases because the mass of the earth pulling you towards the center decreases.

Also, there isn't really a cap for an object falling in free fall, unless there is some medium that it has to go through other than a vacuum. Terminal velocity is just the velocity where the force of gravity equals the drag associated with the velocity. Drag is proportional to velocity (might be velocity squared), so when that velocity is reached, no more acceleration occurs unless gravity increases (which technically it does as you approach the surface), or the drag of the object changes (becomes more aerodynamic, etc)

By the way, if you were to dig a tunnel all the way to the other side of the earth, and if you could evacuate all the air from the tunnel, and jumped in, it would take 42 minutes to reach the other side, and when you passed through the center, you'd be traveling around 11 miles per second.

Even more interesting is that if you dug the tunnel from any one point to any other point (the tunnel has to be perfectly straight and a vacuum), say New York to London, gravity would pull you through the tunnel (slower of course because you aren't going straight down), and it would take 42 minutes.

No matter where you start or end, it would take 42 minutes. So theoretically, you can travel from any point on earth to any other point in 42 minutes with only gravity doing the work.
 
ClemsonTigger

ClemsonTigger

Naturally Grumpy
raven said:
This is true. The type of motors that are used in ToT have never been used for an attraction before. Not only do they pull the elevator up, they pull it down as well. This is why they say it's faster than gravity.

Try this next time you ride: Put a penny on your knee at the top of the big drop. If the penny floats just above your knee, you are traveling at the speed of gravity. If the penny flies above you, you are traveling faster than the speed of gravity.
Click to expand...

And after that penny hits the girl sitting next to you in the face...you have to deal with the gravity of the situation when her boyfriend approaches you in the offload hallway....:eek: :lookaroun
 

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