Science Memes

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launch him anyway (mander.xyz)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

If your leg has a mass of 2kg, 1.1×10^10 J of kinetic energy would require your leg to be moving at about ~~150~~ 100 km/second not faster than the speed of light.

TLDR: Their math is shit.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure you're generating twice as much energy as needed, the required speed is only about 106km/s

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Besides, if you really needed those kinds of speed, you'd obviously have to calculate with relativistic formulas. Energy is asymptotical at the speed of light.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

100 km/sec is not relativistic and even if it were, at no point would that object need to or could exceed the speed of light. Its a fundamental limit that cant be broken.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Setting aside the correctness in OP for the moment, what's being said here is that you don't actually need to break lightspeed. The foot would have to be moving asymptomaticly close to lightspeed, but not passing it. OP used an equasion that works classically, but we're in territory where that model breaks down.

But if the math doesn't work out that way, anyway, then whatever, classical equasions are fine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I was refering to the OP's calculated result in that it's incorrect not only by incorrect math, but also incorrect physics.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, their answer just intuitively seems very wrong. The ratio between the kid's weight and your foot's weight should be equal to the ratio between their final speed and your foot's required speed. Ridiculous.