 
This is the Drop of Doom. It is a terrifying ride. You sit in a flimsy little chair and are quickly whisked 29 stories into the sky. At the top, you can look down between your toes and imagine you're sitting on the edge of a skyscraper. If you look outwards, you can see South America, for heaven's sake!I don't uderstand why anyone would want to do this. Then the brakes fail, and your chair plummets downwards in free-fall. A second or so before you are about to become a layer of jelly on the pavement below, the chairs come to an abrupt but smooth stop. We have some old pictures of Jesse and Emily on this ride, so we though we'd look at the equations of motion for falling bodies, as studied in Physics 20.  Here you can see the chairs in which you sit.Notice especially the look of rapt anticipation on the faces of the riders. Needless to say, the expressions after the ride was over were considerably different. (The words 'white' and 'sheet' come to mind). We weren't allowed to show you that picture. Anyway, the tower is 29 stories tall, which makes it close to 290 feet tall, or about 88 metres or so. 
However, you don't fall freely for the entire distance, since the last part is a smooth, braking descent. We timed the freefall and got a very rough figure of 3 seconds. On the tower at the right, you can see approximately how much of the distance down the tower this represents.The main formula used for falling objects is the following:  d is the downward distance of feefall vi is the initial downwards speed, which is 0 m/s, so the formula can be rewritten:  g is the acceleration due to gravity, which is 9.8 m/s2 downwards.  We have an approximate value for t, the time of freefall; we estimated 3 seconds. This means we can work out how far the seats fell: 
In other words, the ride lets you fall a distance of only about half of the tower's height. The rest of the distance is made up by the supporting mechanism at the top (you aren't quite the full 290 feet up when at the top ... maybe only 250), as well as the distance required to brake, bringing you gently to a stop. Nevertheless, the experience of falling is very real, ... especially if you manage to do it with your eyes open! |