Facts that shocked you

Facts that shocked you

Author
Discussion

Alickadoo

2,829 posts

35 months

Monday 10th March
quotequote all
Exasperated said:
Horses can't vomit.
Scottish rugby players can.

anonymous-user

66 months

Monday 10th March
quotequote all
Alickadoo said:
Scottish rugby players can.
Not a fact that shocked me.

48k

14,757 posts

160 months

Monday 10th March
quotequote all
Roofless Toothless said:
The Post Office in Denmark is to stop delivering letters.
PostNord isn't the Post Office in Denmark, it's the equivalent of Royal Mail.
(This is the Pedants thread, right?) hehe

eldar

23,372 posts

208 months

Monday 10th March
quotequote all
48k said:
PostNord isn't the Post Office in Denmark, it's the equivalent of Royal Mail.
(This is the Pedants thread, right?) hehe
Apostrophe missing thumbup

TwigtheWonderkid

45,702 posts

162 months

Monday 10th March
quotequote all
40% of all Argentinian football fans support Boca Juniors. 30% support River Plate. Indepeniente, Racing & San Lorenzo account for another 16%. There are 42 pro teams in Argentina, so the remaining 37 clubs fight it out for their share of the remaining 14% who don't follow one of the "Big 5".

xiodene

154 posts

165 months

Monday 10th March
quotequote all
Exasperated said:
Big Al told me.
He also said dogs cant look up!

Chauffard

839 posts

9 months

Tuesday 11th March
quotequote all
TwigtheWonderkid said:
40% of all Argentinian football fans support Boca Juniors. 30% support River Plate. Indepeniente, Racing & San Lorenzo account for another 16%. There are 42 pro teams in Argentina, so the remaining 37 clubs fight it out for their share of the remaining 14% who don't follow one of the "Big 5".
Rangers/Celtic with Hearts and Aberdeen, must run that pretty close.

CoolC

4,310 posts

226 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
Something I saw on a little youtube thing about top fuel dragsters.

If you could get a flying start and cross the start line of the drag strip at 200mph as the tree goes green for the dragster, the dragster would still win the 1/4 mile race.

Antony Moxey

9,426 posts

231 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
CoolC said:
Something I saw on a little youtube thing about top fuel dragsters.

If you could get a flying start and cross the start line of the drag strip at 200mph as the tree goes green for the dragster, the dragster would still win the 1/4 mile race.
Top fuel dragster stats are bonkers. Isn't one that by the time the back wheels cross the start line it's already doing 60mph, and another that your sleeves are clipped to steering wheel because the acceleration's too violent to be able to hold on properly.

otolith

60,628 posts

216 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
CoolC said:
Something I saw on a little youtube thing about top fuel dragsters.

If you could get a flying start and cross the start line of the drag strip at 200mph as the tree goes green for the dragster, the dragster would still win the 1/4 mile race.
Quarter mile at 200mph takes 4.5 seconds.

Top fuel dragsters don't run quarters, they run 0.19 miles (1000 feet).

1000 feet at 200mph takes 3.4 seconds.

The current record is 3.641 seconds at 338.94 mph. So at an official event on the standard distance, the 200mph car would win by about a quarter of a second.

If we conservatively assume that the dragster is maxed out by 1000 feet and just maintains the same speed for the remaining 320 feet, it will take 0.64 more seconds to make the quarter, giving a total of 4.285 seconds, putting it 0.215 seconds ahead.

So yes, that's true!

The fastest production car quarter mile time is the Rimac Nevera at 8.4 seconds, assuming that you don't count the McMurtry Spierling at 8.0 seconds.

Working backwards from that, to beat the Rimac you would need to cross the start line at over 107 miles per hour.

Truckosaurus

12,486 posts

296 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
Antony Moxey said:
Top fuel dragster stats are bonkers. ...
Indeed. If anyone has not seen them in the flesh then you must make the effort to do so. Utter aural violence!

curtisl

1,405 posts

218 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
Truckosaurus said:
Indeed. If anyone has not seen them in the flesh then you must make the effort to do so. Utter aural violence!
I was fortunate enough to be in very close proximity to the drag car that was at the FoS media day a few years back. I helped wheel it out into position and hung around for them to fire it up. I positioned myself in a crouched position with my camera in hand, in line with the exhausts. With one mere blip of the throttle, I was almost deaf, my nose and eyes were streaming, and I was knocked back a few feet. It was an assault of all of my senses and that was just from a blip. What it would be at full chat would be mind blowing!

DodgyGeezer

43,412 posts

202 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
Iirc they run virtually hydrolocked - some pix of them getting off the line are pretty awesome too

Dbag101

1,023 posts

6 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
Truckosaurus said:
Indeed. If anyone has not seen them in the flesh then you must make the effort to do so. Utter aural violence!
The big NHRA American events ( Winternationals et. al.) are insane. After Scott’s accident in 2008, the distance of the strip was shortened, and it lost a lot of appeal for a lot of people. When it was a full quarter, it was even madder than now. It’s still insane to witness, just slightly safer now.

Tango13

9,340 posts

188 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
otolith said:
CoolC said:
Something I saw on a little youtube thing about top fuel dragsters.

If you could get a flying start and cross the start line of the drag strip at 200mph as the tree goes green for the dragster, the dragster would still win the 1/4 mile race.
Quarter mile at 200mph takes 4.5 seconds.

Top fuel dragsters don't run quarters, they run 0.19 miles (1000 feet).

1000 feet at 200mph takes 3.4 seconds.

The current record is 3.641 seconds at 338.94 mph. So at an official event on the standard distance, the 200mph car would win by about a quarter of a second.

If we conservatively assume that the dragster is maxed out by 1000 feet and just maintains the same speed for the remaining 320 feet, it will take 0.64 more seconds to make the quarter, giving a total of 4.285 seconds, putting it 0.215 seconds ahead.

So yes, that's true!

The fastest production car quarter mile time is the Rimac Nevera at 8.4 seconds, assuming that you don't count the McMurtry Spierling at 8.0 seconds.

Working backwards from that, to beat the Rimac you would need to cross the start line at over 107 miles per hour.
You should read Milton O Thompsons' book on flying the rocket powered X-15

A top fuel dragster weighs about 1050kg fully fuelled on the start line, the X-15 was about 15,000kg ready to launch and like the dragster could also gain 100mph in forward speed every second.

The difference being a dragster tops out at 350mph whilst the X-15 would be gaining that 100mph whilst in a 45 degree climb on the other side of 3,000mph...

If, whilst towing your top fuel dragster on the public highway you were unlucky enough to be in a collision with a camper van your dragster is probably going to sustain a lot of damage.

Hit that same camper van with the wing of an X-15 and you'll slice the top off the camper like a freshly boiled egg without so much as a scratch on your rocket plane, we know this as it happened whilst NASA were recovering an X-15 from one of the alternate landing sites yes

DodgyGeezer

43,412 posts

202 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
2 words/1 name

John Stapp

Arnold Cunningham

4,132 posts

265 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
And yet, at top speed the X-15 still started to disintegrate! Bonkers aeroplane.

Error_404_Username_not_found

3,383 posts

63 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
Arnold Cunningham said:
And yet, at top speed the X-15 still started to disintegrate! Bonkers aeroplane.
Yeah but...
Then as now, for some too much is not enough.
Bonkers stuff like this makes the world a better place for me.
smile

Tango13

9,340 posts

188 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
Arnold Cunningham said:
And yet, at top speed the X-15 still started to disintegrate! Bonkers aeroplane.
Apart from melting with the friction of the air at Mach 6.7 / 4,500mph there were also issues with canopy windows shattering at speed, nose wheel self deploying at four times the speed of sound, engines exploding during ground test runs, main engine failing to ignite on launch and bouncing off the denser atmosphere on re-entry if the glide angle wasn't perfect.

One of the pilots described the sheer terror of being able to see the Pacific Ocean at the apex of the climb and thinking he was going to over-shoot Edwards AFB getting his feet wet in the Pacific. When he mentioned this to a colleague they commented 'Oh yeah, forgot to mention that...'

Only twelve men walked on the moon, only twelve men flew the X-15 and only one man did both!

Nicks90

607 posts

66 months

Wednesday 12th March
quotequote all
DodgyGeezer said:
Iirc they run virtually hydrolocked - some pix of them getting off the line are pretty awesome too
The thing with these drag cars that always astound me, if they average about 7500rpm during their run, from start to finish the engines only turn over 500 revs!!!

500 revolutions to deploy enough power to launch a car weighing nearly a tonne to in excess of 300mph in less than 4 seconds