Do you fall quicker on Oblivion than you would falling yourself?

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Do you fall faster on Oblivion or on your own

On Oblivion
16
46%
On your own
8
23%
No difference
7
20%
Cant decide
4
11%
 
Total votes: 35
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Coaster_Dude
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Really, the key points here are that Oblivion is not 'propelled' down the drop, it freefalls. It will also most likely have more resistive forces acting on it than a single person, so my money would be on the person hitting first, but only marginally.

Differences in terminal velocity is irellevant because neither will have enough time to reach it.
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Badgy
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Terminal velocity is relevant. Even though neither object will reach it, if allowed to do so they would reach their terminal velocities at the same time. Therefore the object with a higher terminal velocity will have a greater rate of accelleration and hence at any point on the fall would have a higher speed.

Badgy
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Dormiens-Dave

However!

A person falling is subject to gravity and wind resistance

Oblivion is subject to gravity... wind resistance and Friction.



Food for thought!
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MatthewR1990
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Friction in the bearings of the wheels is going to be very minimal. Especially with that much weight being dropped almost vertically. In fact I would be so brave to say that the wheels might be of a lesser amount of friction than air itself.
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Dormiens-Dave

Friction on the bearings, friction on the track... it may be small but its something the guy falling doesn't have.

Not that that will be any comfort to him but hey :D
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I'llookdownifiwanto
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At the bottom of the drop the shuttles travel at 30.4 m/s. According to this website: (http://keisan.casio.com/has10/SpecExec.cgi), a person weighing 75kg would reach a maximum
speed of 30.8 m/s while falling 180 feet . So, a person would fall faster. This is probably due to the fact Oblivion shuttles have a larger surface area than a person and are most certainly not aerodynamic, and the fact that the drop isn't completely vertical all the way down :)
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lukaNW
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when working there, i often was one of the people who 'tested' it in the morning, there was nothing really to look for that was out of the ordinary on the drop apart from seeing if the drop conveyor was in order. anyway what i am getting at is i had a lot of oppertunities to test different methods of riding.

my favourite was sitting in the front row sitting in either seat 3 or seat 6 and having my harness lax (obviously still safe as it never was higher than the arm rests, ok maybe some of the time  :lol:) if you put your feet between the metal frame on the grab rail and put your arms out straight you can feel a freefalling experience which is honestly the best experience on the park for me of course. on my recollection just now while reading this post i realised that my body and the seat diddnt meet until i was whisked back up at the bottom of the tunnel. that i remember because of the freedom that you felt while doing it. anyway once doing my little stunt i then would proceed to check that the mist was on and that the tunnel lights were switched off.

another little addition to the above method is to tilt your head to the sky and keep it that way, makes you feel as if your on detonator at thorpe with an added bit of rollercoaster. scares you the first time. (does give you butterflies in your tummy)

hope this helps and if you do wish to try my method out please send £1.50 loyalty to barclays bank a/c ******10  :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: only kidding
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Delta79
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can someone get hold of buster from mythbuster.  that would answer it  :lol: :lol:
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Badgy
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There is a decent simulator here http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/projectile-motion/projectile-motion_en.html where you can fire objects out of a cannon.

Adjust the height of the cannon and the angle and other params to see what happens.

Obviously it doesnt take friction into account but does show that in fact a human would hit the ground first. So any friction effects would make this to be more the case. The effect is small though and you have to guess at some of the figures like cross sectional area and mass.

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sku11dude123
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Riding oblivion, The fall from an average person will be slow because of air resistance. But for oblivion its a VERY heavy object so in that case oblivion is going to hit the hole before the average human. 
Bear

sku11dude123 wrote: Riding oblivion, The fall from an average person will be slow because of air resistance. But for oblivion its a VERY heavy object so in that case oblivion is going to hit the hole before the average human.
An Oblivion shuttle is massive and has ridiculous air resistance, a person is relatively small and thin, and would slice through the air far easier. Weight has absolutely nothing to do with it!

An Oblivion shuttle also has further to travel, with it traversing an outward curve. A person would fall straight down, a shorter route.

An Oblivion shuttle AAAALSO has extra friction involved with the wheel clusters that tightly clamp the shuttle to the track. A person has no such wheel-clustular attachment.
Last edited by Bear on Fri May 25, 2012 10:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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sku11dude123
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Goes to show how "brilliant" i am at the laws of physics  :roll:
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