How fast would you have to accelerate in a car (say, 0-60) to feel 1g of acceleration?

Question

This may not be answerable. I'm not sure. Or maybe not in the form I am asking. Could you sustain 1 earth gravity of acceleration in an automobile?

Answer 1

simple

V= a*t

a=9.8 m/s

V= 60mph = 26.8 m/s

26.8/9.8 = 2.7376 seconds!!!!

That's how fast u will get from zero to sixty when experiencing one G laterally....

Answer 2

I presume you mean to accelerate from 0 - 60 mph, since that is a standard measure of a car's acceleration.

As you no doubt appreciate as an avid reader of your own State's Driving Handbook, 60 mph is precisely 88ft/s.

The acceleration ' g ' is commonly written as 32ft/s^2, or more accurately as 32.2ft/s^2.

Since v = gt, these two values just quoted for a constant acceleration of ' g ' would imply times of 2.750s or 2.733...s, respectively.

Anyone with a rudimentary calculator can check this for themselves. I have ABSOLUTELY NO idea how the previous responder obtained a value of 2.6s for this idealized case. That result for the time taken would imply that g = 33.85...ft/s^2, a value FAR OUTSIDE any range that I have ever seen quoted previously.

Of course, your own question is really a tautology. You didn't ask what time it would take you, but rather "How fast would you have to accelerate in a car (say, 0-60) to feel 1g of acceleration?"

The answer to that question is that in order to feel an acceleration of 1 g HORIZONTALLY, you'd have to ACCELERATE at 1 g HORIZONTALLY. (This is a true statement, but hardly very deep. As John Cleese, whom I had the pleasure to see perform when he was an undergraduate, would say: "This is NOT a proposition from Wittgenstein!") So, what on EARTH were you thinking of?!

Incidentally, I do not know of any car that could accelerate from 0 - 60mph in such a short time. It may well be possible for a rocket sled, but I think I recall that the shortest times boasted of by car manufacturers to accelerate from 0 - 60mph are on the oder of perhaps 5 or 6 seconds, or an acceleration of about 1/2 g.

But of course, if it were possible to build such a car, the human body could "sustain 1 earth gravity of acceleration." Why would you possibly imagine that it couldn't? When you sit in an armchair, you are experiencing EXACTLY the same stresses as if you were being accelerated at 1g in empty space.

In fact, by experiencing those same stresses for approximately one year (yes, just the same as sitting in an armchair!) you will reach essentially the speed of light. Check out THAT estimate for yourself.

Live long and prosper.

Answer 3

1 g is the force of gravity on the earth's surface, which is 9.8 meters per second. If you are sitting still, you would experience 1 g vertically, but 0 g horizontally. To experience 1g horizontally, you would have to accelerate from 0 to 9.8 m/sec in the first sec, 19.6 m/sec in the 2nd second, 39.2 m/sec in the 3rd second, etc.

To convert that to "car speed" you would have to accelerate 0-60 km/h in 1.9 seconds. If you are in the 3% of the world's population that still uses miles, and mean 0-60 mph, you would need to accelerate to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds to sustain 1 g horizontally.

Like catbarf mentioned, the acceleration of cars is not a linear function and therefore these numbers are only theoretical.

Answer 4

Yes you can sustain 1 g; some roller coasters top 2g accleration. You probably can do this in a very powerful car. However, despite physics problems with constant accleration fields, the accleration vs time pattern with cars is more complex, and you may exceed 1 g for a small portion of the time.

Answer 5

that would be sitting still, you'd feel as heavy as you are, 1G, i think you are wondering how much to feel twice as heavy as you are, 2G. but i don't know.