Posts tagged with physics

XKCD What if? Earth-Moon Fire Pole

2018-06-06 bookmarks physics rockets

From some tooltips:

It's common knowledge that Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth, measured from sea level. A somewhat more obscure piece of trivia is that the point on the Earth's surface farthest from its center is the summit of Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador, due to the fact that the planet bulges out at the equator. Even more obscure is the question of which point on the Earth's surface moves the fastest as the Earth spins, which is the same as asking which point is farthest from the Earth's axis. The answer isn't Chimborazo or Everest. The fastest point turns out to be the peak of Mt. Cayambe, a volcano north of Chimborazo. And now you know.

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DO NOT USE THIS GRAPH FOR PLANNING PURPOSES. It's not that it isn't accurate, it's just that any kind of plan that involves this type of data is probably a bad one.

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For aerodynamic reasons, this [protective] gear should probably make it look like you're wearing a very fast airplane.