this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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[–] birbs@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Human terminal velocity is roughly 56 m/s. Let's say our superhero wants to decelerate the person at 10G, which should be survivable for a short period. That would be 0.6 seconds of deceleration over 48 m. That's a short time but quite a long distance, let's slow down faster:

20G -> 0.28 seconds, 24 m.

30G -> 0.19 seconds, 16 m.

50G -> 0.11 seconds, 9.6 m.

100G -> 0.057 seconds, 4.79 m.

200G -> 0.029 seconds, 2.45 m.

5000G -> 0.0011 seconds, 3.6 inches.

A 40 mph car crash in a modern car into a solid wall gives around 15G.

F1 driver David Purley survived a 180G crash in 1977.

In short, I don't recommend catching someone with 3 inches to spare.

[–] Toine@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

Something is wrong with your distance formula by a factor of 4 (you should have D=1/2 * V_0^2 / a) . Not that it changes anything in your conclusions.

[–] sarchar@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago

Wow. Good math. Thanks!