What if NASCAR had no rules?
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- Опубликовано: 18 дек 2023
- Get a copy of What If? 2 and Randall’s other books at: xkcd.com/books
More serious answers to absurd questions at: what-if.xkcd.com/
What if you ignored all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible. What strategy would win? Let’s say the racer has to survive.
Randall Munroe is the author of the New York Times bestsellers What If? 2, How To, What If?, and Thing Explainer; the science question-and-answer blog What If?; and the popular web comic xkcd (xkcd.com). A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time.
Henry Reich is the creator of MinutePhysics and executive producer of MinuteEarth and MinuteFood and founder of Neptune Studios (the parent company for all three youtube channels).
Credits
Narrated by and based on "What If?" by Randall Munroe
Written & Directed by Henry Reich
Illustration and Video Editing by Lizah van der Aart
Illustration and Animation by Ever Salazar
Music & Sound Effects by Know Art Studios
What If? The Video Series is the official adaptation of the What If? books by Randall Munroe and is produced by Neptune Studios LLC.
©2023 xkcd, inc. 
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The major innovation here is the driver seat gimbal to make sure the accelerations are always "Eyeballs In".
That seems like a good classification of virtually all what if? experiments: eyeballs in or eyeballs out. Mostly it is out though...
This is a tatic in some sci-fy novels for ships so they can do crazy meanuevurs in space/atmospheres. The most recent I've that uses this is the Skyward Series by Brandon Sanderson (book #1 is called Starsight). Pretty neat. He consulted with pilots with his ship design and had to redo the whole cockpit basically so the fights he wanted to be done could actually be done without the pilots dying/severe injury (though he still uses a technology to reduce the effect of very high impulse).
Hey Destin!
Laces out! No wait, eyeballs in!
What if we hired a driver with no eyeballs?
“Oops, we’ve accidentally built a particle accelerator” might be the most XKCD sentence ever
As soon as we went from centrifuge to tube, I knew this would be the inevitable result
Aww not again !
Nah, the most xkcd sentence is “you wouldn’t really die of anything in the traditional sense, you’d simply cease being biology and become physics.”
@@DestructivelyPhasedthat one's a classic 😂
@@DestructivelyPhased Oh no Mr Stark I don't feel so physics
"Let's say the human has to survive" is my favorite clause of what-if questions.
I love how quickly it was vetoed to make things more interesting.
Turns out, even if Nascar had no rules, the universe still would have
Great phrase
When you cross the line from “driving a Nascar track quickly” to “Oops, we built a particle accelerator”, you know SCIENCE was involved.
I laughed at that one
At least technology...
specifically all-caps... *inhales... SCIENCE*
As carcinization turns organisms into crabs, a similar process turns any "What if?" style question involving physics into a discussion of building a particle accelerator.
lol nice one
Between the requirements of "driver alive" and "no driver", there should be "driver, but not necessarily alive". How fast could we slush around a person's worth of soup-like homogenate?
Ah, the self-driving racecar hearse variant.
This was Elon's original plan, but then he bought twitter. Similar if slower result.@@jkid1134
Or alternatively, "driver, but not necessarily alive" as in an AI-piloted vehicle. The car can only go as fast as the sensors and computers can process what's happening and make decisions.
Gaygenate
@@trbz_8745 Well, at that point you might still be limited by the acceleration tolerance of the electronics. I believe most computer motherboards can survive 100 gees for short periods, but I'm not sure about long timeframes. Artillery fuzes and shell guidance computers can also survive peak loads of thousands of gees, but again I'm not sure about sustained loads. I would assume 100 gees sustained would probably be a reasonable upper limit for a purpose-built unit with enough processing power for a self-driving race car. The tires and engine would probably give out long before reaching that, though.
When I read the question itself it reminded me of Car Wars, the tabletop game. For a racing scenario like this, you usually had to limit cars to having no track-damaging or disrupting weapons, which meant no mines, caltrops, spike plates, non-flaming oil slicks, explosive rockets, etc. Just slug throwers, smoke or paint sprayers, lasers, etc. The question became what's the lightest armored car that could survive to reach the finish first.
Yeah, the lack of restrictions on preventing the competition from moving quickly is a significant oversight that the video fails to address.
That sort of thing could end up being a serious issue when training AIs on how to perform tasks. The rules that humans claim they are following are always a small subset of the ones that they actually are following.
Fun fact: in 2001 Indycar actually found the limit of human tolerance for G force. The cars were going around the track in Texas so fast the drivers were beginning to lose consciousness and the race had to be cancelled.
IIRC the drivers were hitting 6 Gs in the turns
Looked it up, apparently the pole in qualifying was averaged at 233mph/375kmh on a 1.5 mile/2.4 km course.
Yea that sounds like it would lead to some new and interesting doctor's visits.
Also minor correction, that was CART, not Indycar.
CART not Indy (Mandatory "Tony George ruined american open wheel racing") Built to the rules, Indy cars weren't as fast.
People started to notice drivers walking strangely and having other obvious neurological symptoms after qualifying laps. Then after some research they realized they were hitting 5+ Gs in the turns every lap and that it was very likely someone - or multiple someones - would blackout during the race. Only race that CART ever cancelled for driver safety.
Was this the same event that cause driver's retinas to separate? or was it corneas
@@VekhGaming The modern Indycar series considers CART, ChampCar, and the Indy Racing League to be predecessors. In 1999 Juan Pablo Montoya won the CART championship and Greg Ray won the IRL championship, and today they're both considered Indycar champions.
Due to how the question is phrased, I'm pretty sure keeping the human and car stationary and moving the track relative to them at high acceleration would work.
Awesome idea! But then the structural integrity of the track would probably be a limitation, assuming you can engineer the massive machine to lift and spin a NASCAR track.
If you can replace the asphalt with some kind of carbon nanotube material, is it still the same track? What if you reinforce it with an outer layer of super strong material?
I like the idea of a NASCAR track frisbee, but chatGPT says it can't exist :(@@roryschussler
Or, speed up time relative to anyone else on the track.
@@DirtyMardi "Q:It's simple, change the gravitational constant of the universe."
@@roryschussler And what if you replace a section of the track with carbon nanotube? What if over time you gradually replace the track with the nanotube? Is it still the Track of Daytona?
One of the best NASCAR cheats was Smokey Yunick realizing that there was a limit on the size of the gas tank, but not the size of the fuel line.
Dude made an 11' x 2" fuel line that held an extra 2 gallons 😂
Serious legend right there. It's fair to say the entire rule book was written based on his stunts
That's magnificent
The story goes that the inspectors found a different issue with his car, and tired of his antics, remove the fuel tank so he'd have to have it towed back to the garage. He then hops in the car, starts it right up, and drives off while yelling about there's one more issue they didn't catch.
@@gamemeister27how do you remove a fuel tank with fuel in it??
And Robert Duvall said that in Days of Thunder! But it's a pretty boring way to cheat! The Chaparral 2J had better downforce than anything in 1970 because it had an extra snowmobile engine powering two fans which sucked it down to the ground. I had to look that up when I saw how weird the car looked in Gran Turismo LOL
@@GewelReal you're gonna have to ask someone who knows way more about mechanic stuff
The "conCERNing" pun deserves an award
2:29 I love the casual mention here - "It would also mean breaking the sound barrier on the back stretch" like it's NBD 🤷♀️
"Oops! We've accidentally built a particle accelerator"
You need to stop doing that Randall
Channeling black hat.
“Caaaarrrrlllllll!!!!”
"What are you doing up honey? It's 1am"
"Oh just finishing putting together the barbeque"
"What's this part for?"
"Oh that's the capacitor for the electromagnet, it'll accelerate the- god damnit"
Small, possibly pedantic issue: at 3:31 you say that diamond is one of the TOUGHEST materials, when in fact it's toughness (ability to deform plastically without breaking) is quite poor. Its HARDNESS, however, is spectacular. Other than that, great video, love your work!
True! Toughness is the area under the stress strain curve.
Yes! Words have specific meanings in a science/engineering context.
This is a safe space for pedantry.
That's one point for PumpkinsAmongUs
I'm sorry but you didn't say "Um, actually" so I can't give it to you
I binge-read xkcd over a decade ago, I always thought it stood out as one of the very best webcomics. I'm so surprised to have my perception of the author suddenly expanded with the addition of his voice.
I feel like his voice sounds exactly like I expected haha
Here’s an idea: since all tracks are topologically circles, you can build a car that has the driver’s seat mounted on a retractable arm that can extend to some ludicrous length. The arm is on a pivot that allows it to point towards any direction. Now, during a race, just make sure that the human driver stays at an arbitrary point near the track, and have the arm swing in a certain way, such that the human stays relatively still as the car completes the race.
The challenge is not move a car around a track, rather "get a human being around a track" not sure if yours fulfills that requirement.
cheater ;-)
It is not true that all racetracks are toplogically circles - Suzuka in Japan, for example, is a figure-8. But I think the solution works anyway.
@@Adarisayou’d have trouble getting the arm under the bridge at Suzuka I think
Oh, so it has a bridge/tunnel for the intersection, not both roads on the same level?🤔😅 Both roads on the same level would make the race much more interesting: "See you at the crossroads" (splat)😮.@@MikeyAntonakakis
I feel like "Oops, we accidentally made a particle accelerator" is going to become a running joke of this channel.
I really hope so
So far these are all from the books, so no, the running gag is ending life on earth or worse.
@@mrptr9013 Why not both!
It's like the way that all efforts to perfect transportation end up reinventing the passenger train.
That or "oops we accidently made a black hole" or "oops, we accidently made a particle accelerator followed by a black hole"
Fun fact! Formula 1 cars are limited by rules to keep them within what a human being can withstand because drivers started passing out on corners! Instead of incorporating g suits and such, they made rules that keep the cars from breaking their fragile human occupants!
That's a funny way of spelling "squishy meatbag."
In other words, their balls were too heavy to go this fast
g-suit might not be the answer because it's not the same as fighter jet that pull you 9-10G downward. F1 are pulling 5-6G sideway.
I think g-suit is just squeeze your legs and let less blood flow down when it got pulled.
All the sideway protections are mostly there now.
And the main thing is, they don't want to make it faster than this, it's very dangerous already at this speed. It probably capped at 7G,370 km/hr forever.
Still, both are amazing enough that somehow, we as human can train to endure it hundreds of times per flight/race.
I think they should drive them remotely, and eliminate all those annoying safety rules. It'd make for far more interesting races. You might want to avoid being in the audience, however, due to the increased risk of taking a F1 car to the face.
CART (now IndyCar) actually had to cancel a race at Texas Motor Speedway in 2001 because of this
Man i hate when i accidentally create a particle accelerator
That "oops we built a particle accelerator" line is so relatable. You don't know how many times I've been doing thought experiments in my head for fun, only to find I've come back to something that already exists.
Hmmm, the speed with a healthy human might be lower, rotating them to keep the G-forces oriented towards their chests would introduce significant torque on the body as it turned at those speeds. These kinds of motions are particularly prone to concussions due to the brain failing to rotate as fast as the skull.
There is only a slight divergence between the force and the desired "down" direction. So that should not be a problem. Instead the rotation will add a centripetal force adding to the G-force.
This reduces the max G-force the vehicle can experience to keep the driver safe.
I was about to say the same thing. One could probably calculate an acceleration profile which minimizes jerk or snap around the track, and simply take a couple integrals to find the time.
But since that acceleration profile is periodic, I personally think a clever punch line would be to treat it as a wavefunction, put it through a Fourier transformation, and riff on the solution's units & dimensionality. Kinda like the previous "What If?" answer on fuel efficiency as a unit of area corresponding to the cross-section of a hypothetical ribbon of fuel along a highway.
I do appreciate that he went for the re-orientation sphere, though.
whoever had the idea for this youtube channel is a genius. makes me wanna buy the books more and more. love you randall!
Given how Randall follows the vocal conventions as the rest of Neptune studios productions, whether or not he pitched it, they're definitely the driving force behind it.
@@punkdigerati RUclips videos are just a medium for the delivery of content. It's the content that matters. And the content is made by Randall Munroe.
@@Li-Nuss you can read the same video description as I did to see the people and corporation behind this.
What's crazy is that minutephysics was inspired by xkcd and they now get to work together
that is awesome@@adityakhanna113
3:40 "Diamonds: actually flammable"! 🔥
I remember getting into xkcd's what ifs about like 8-10 years ago. Loved the concept. After it kinda stopped I discovered lots of youtubers, that in my eyes took the formula, tweaked it and run with it, all great educators in their own right, guys like mustard and CGP grey, latter i think adapted the art style and tendency to go off a deep end. The scene bloom and grew, it became a staple, a phenomena, tracing roots to xkcd's what if. In a way it is to all others like AVGN was for comedy game reviews and letsplayers - a granddad. But as AVGN continued to work in the same medium, What if never really jumped to video format. Well, up until recently that is. And it worked out just about as well as I was imagining it (barring the mouse over quotes and footnote hyperlinks). That underlines how much the edutainment community borrowed from What If in my opinion. And it's great.
Thanks, Randall!
As far as I'm concerned this might as well be in a foreign language.
@@Frisbieinstein sorry, English is not my native language, and I tend to ramble...
I remember in _The Expanse_ one of the hard limitations of small ship space combat/racing is how many Gs the human body can handle. They have special chemicals that people are injected with to help mitigate the negative effects of high g maneuvers but even then 15g is about the maximum before people start dying
"Here comes the juice!"
Also racing ships have gyroscopes in them to orient the pilots into the safest position.
ooh and they also had these really cool pilot seats that would swivel against the g-forces just like the ball thingy in the video
yeah, that's a huge problem for any hard-scifi witer that want human crews in space battles
the following is a rant saying that drones would be great in space battles :
(edit : disregard that, I fucked up my maths, you only need a 1-2 Gs to juke a laser at 5 light-seconds, the argument do not stand)
(at least if you have the tech to make laser weapons effective at those ranges, but if you have torch-drives, I assume that you have at least hard-UV lasers)
(unmmaned crafts still make sense in space because they are much more resilient to thing that would kill us, but g-forces are not one of them)
(at least not in space battles)
(edit edit : I also fucked up the earth-moon distance, it's 1 light-second, not 8)
Given the fact that you can't dodge light-speed weapons (i.e. lasers, maser, xraser, etc) (and, realistically, close to light-speed, like particle beams and macrons accelerators) because you literally cannot see them coming, you have to randomly juke so that the enemy cannot know where you are due to light-lag, which mean you have to move fast enough that your ship isn't in the same place at all in a whatever your light-time distance is.
So if you are engaging an enemy at 5 light-second, which is an enormous distance (for reference, the moon is at roughly 1 light-seconds from Earth), you have 5 second to move before they return fire with perfect accuracy.
Having battle like that would be hell on any human crew, so the solution would be to have battle at 20-30 light-seconds or, much more practical, use unmanned ships !
You could even use highly mobile drones swarms with very fast, very small ships bouncing and refocusing a laser generated by a bigger ship much further away to engage enemies at maybe half to a third of a light-second ! (yeah, "close-quarter" has a different meaning is space)
Or you could go the other way and say "fuck light-speed weapons" and use missiles and coil-guns instead. They have the same problems but at much, much closer range.
But that's boring.
I love The Expanse, but I'm skeptical that drugs or chemicals could increase a human's g tolerance without killing them. G forces kill because they cause tissue to physically crush itself, so what could you inject that would counteract that? Something like embalming fluid??
For anyone interested in actual no-rules racing, there's hill climbs, which while not strictly speaking wheel-to-wheel racing (it's a time trial), require some ridiculous aero devices to navigate twisty mountain roads at silly speeds.
Also time attack. Google "KERS Kels" and that's not even close to the craziest one...
Super Modifieds. They race short ovals. I don't know if they have rules today but the whole series was built on an anything goes basis. Just had to have 4 tires and an engine that powers it.
@@thejman3489 those are the ones with the gigantic rear wings, right?
@alimanski7941 Yes. The wings were originally on Sprint Cars and Sprint Cars still use it. The super modifieds took the wing a step further and made it lift up going down the straights, reducing drag, and goes down in the corners, increasing down force.
my first reaction for what a car that was reasonably expected to race an oval track without a rulebook or budget would end up being a hybrid of an unlimited hillclimber, a supermodified, and a Group-C sportscar, likely with a turbine engine for speedways and high-displacement piston for short-tracks.
So cool to actually hear Randall's voice along with these what-ifs! Congrats on arriving to a new platform buddy!
So glad you're still uploading! Thanks so much! I've loved this series so long, & am super eager for more videos of it!
I am so happy Randall started a RUclips channel. Thank you for your content!
If you allow for a circular track, orbiting a gravity well will get you moving pretty fast without any unhealthy acceleration. Tidal forces from the gravity well will set a lower limit to the track size.
The person in question would still have to contend with hard radiation from small particles that happen to be nearby, and from the gamma/x-ray radiation from the "spectator lights". So, yes, you could race "particles" this way, but for humans, the limit would be how much radiation do you agree to take to your balls.
Isn't an orbit by definition a constant acceleration towards the centre? Just because we don't feel significant g-forces in freefall around the earth, doesn't mean we wouldn't while orbiting on the scale of 1-2km circumference
@@dielaughing73 the point of the OP is to compensate for the human-squashing acceleration by entering an orbit of a small black hole. so, in principle, if you set things just right, you could be orbiting a tiny black hole and doing just 3G inwards and that would be faster than doing a zero-G orbit around the same gravity well. You would still have to contend with the radiation though.
@@dielaughing73 As long as every bit of your body is being accelerated at the same rate it might as well be standing still. It's when some parts of the body are accelerated more than others and they bang into each to balance things out that you turn into goo.
@@Wick9876 that's making my head hurt a bit but I can't find a way to refute it. I imagine you'd get a bit dizzy or disoriented still from spinning around so fast..
These What-Ifs work so well in video format! Great idea.
No freakin way we get an xkcd RUclips channel!!
THANK YOU FRIEND, I’ve missed binging your comics at work but our filters don’t allow it anymore, now you’re back where they can’t see you :)
Discovering xkcd has a RUclips channel is like Christmas coming early
Soooo, the Large Hadron Collider is basically a miniature NASCAR track…
Seriously love these videos. Good brain food.
Miniature? It's 27 km long
@@galoomba5559 On the other hand, the "cars" are very small.
@@galoomba5559 my bad. I mean the cars are miniature, the track is humongous.
i love that these are being turned into videos. i read your first what if years ago and loved it
Dude I loved your books, so glad I found this channel :D
I love when these ideas trend to "Whoops, we accidentally built an x."
Fastest NASCAR? Reduce the mass, magnetically levitate it! Oops, it's a particle accelerator.
Cook a chicken by slapping? Reduce the size of the slaps, spread them out over time. What you're describing is an oven.
I absolutely love your videos!!! Keep up the good work!
Thank you for making a RUclips channel! I have been a fan of the xkcd site for years, and I was so happy to see a channel dedicated to your view of the universe.
I’m so happy this series is on RUclips now. Thank you!
You could reanimate the dead driver right before the finish line just go fast enough to not have lasting damage from being dead but not too fast to make sure they don’t get damage from going to fast
The thing is, in the last example, The driver (particle accelerator operator) actually stays alive and well!
Not really going around the track anymore, though, are they?
@@abraveastronaut No, but they’re still alive.
Soooooo well done!!!
Every time I had a thought to improve the process, the narrator was already there! Great job!
Oh my god I'm so glad you've started uploading these. I lost my copy of the first book and this has made my day! Instant subscribe, looking forward to more :)
3:47
O O P S
4 likes in a month?
That was fast...
Also
This is conCENing
I'm interested though if the sport were to evolve to have drivers remotely operating their vehicles. It becomes much more like a video game, but with the limitations of real life physics. What are the highest speeds that could be achieved before the reaction time of the driver is insufficient to operate the vehicle on these tracks?
Drone car racing would be an amazing sport
such a sport would be required to make power-ups _mandatory_. Nascar with banana peels and turtle shells is something I might actually watch!
They already race RC cars. Look at multirotor FPV racing, 3D heli aerobatics and pan car racing to get an idea.
If you look at top level video gaming, the reaction times needed are superhuman.
or even better - allow ai. at first it will be the same driving aids used in road cars but over time better ai will be developed that can completely replace the human driver.
I love your books. It's fun and informative. Nice to see you on RUclips.
there's a TON of fascinating science-based stuff in auto racing that frankly doesn't get covered enough on RUclips. As a life long NASCAR fan, I couldn't be happier seeing this video pop up!
I legitimately love this series! Own all of the books, favourite being what if and what if 2, thanks for making such a great series :)
What other books are there? I only knowing these 2
@@foximacentauri7891 Thing Explainer is great fun.
@@foximacentauri7891 there is how to and i think there is also a why if however it may have just been a parody inside the book
3:00 this limit holds only if the strap has the same cross section all along. If the cross section is allowed to vary, you can go way faster.
Just subscribed. Im SOO glad i found this xkcd youtube channel. Seem pretty new or not many videos as of yet (unless im missing something). I REALLY Hope to see more what if videos AND potentially other new xkcd video series(!!!) in the future as im sure they would be popular! WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE.
My favorite video in your series. Nice work 👍
I guess the final step would be to make a black hole with event horizon just smaller than the track lenght. That way you could make light orbit in a straight line around the black hole.
You'd want the event horizon to be 2/3 the track radius. That way the track lines up with the photon sphere, the radius at which light orbits in a circle. Any lower than that and the light would plunge into the black hole.
Did you consider the possibility of a frozen embryo? It's a stretch of the definition of human and alive, but I think it would be able to withstand more gs.
ahah, now that's thinking with portals
hell, let's go a step further. Change the laws to recognize a fertilized egg as a human. Think how much we could improve the record!
"It's a stretch of the definition of human and alive"
Religious lunatics disagree
This is an unusually good way to put the speed of light in perspective!
Love this! I have all your books and check in with every comic strip. (Escape Velocity is a hoot)
Keep them coming!
“Eyeballs -fall out- distort” gave me a hearty chuckle, thanks Randall and Merry Christmas
❤️💚❤️💚❤️
Particle accelerator doesn't leave much room for advertisements thats for sure!
When you're dealing in absolutes (best, fastest) it makes sense that you'd keep arriving at similar solutions, but it's always so intriguing to see the path you take to get there!
I'm sorry, where did you get such TOP TIER sound effects? I listened to this video 23 TIMES just for the sound effects, and I was brought to TEARS by them! Beautiful work!
These illustrations are neat! He should start a webcomic!
Yeah. I think he could write a book or two as well.
Hey I have a brilliant idea! He should name it "What if" just like his youtube channel!
The NASCAR to particle accelerator pipeline is real
This is amazing, I been reading XKCD for years, so happy to see it on RUclips!!
This is so informative! Great job, fantastic reporting!🌻🌼🐝 Keep it up 🙌
We've basically hit that limit of human capabilities in other racing categories - the Firestone Firehawk 600 in 2001 had to be cancelled due to concerns over g-force induced loss of consciousness. The average speed of the pole lap was 233.344 miles per hour, and that's on a 1.5 mile tri-oval, not the 2.5 mile configuration for Daytona, so your corners have a tighter radius
The human 3-6g limit is for g forces acting downwards. Thats what a pilot experiences while turning. This is the limit due to your blood being pulled down to your feet and leaving your brain without oxygen. But when making sure the g forces always act to your back, you could very likely sustain quite a bit more than that, and thus move at a higher speed
Love xkcd. Didn't know about the youtube channel. Happy it showed up in my feed.
I am so happy to hear Randall's voice after loving his work for so many years.
This was an awesome concept and great video!
So glad I'm on this channel early. This one's going to blow up real soon
Great content. Thank you. Merry Christmas.
Love this video! And It’s the handwriting is inspiring. Kudos to the artists.
An additional step comes to mind: surround your vehicle with enough mass to distort spacetime. Oops, we’ve built an Alcubierre drive.
Omg I had your what if book as a kid
Awesome to find your channel
please make make more of these vids :-) love them so much
I did already read this in the website and the book, but watching it in video form gives it a new life. Goob job!👍
I'm so glad I discovered this channel 🎉
Excellent and useful information to know, thank you!
Just wondering, did you account for the angular accelleration required to rotate the driver to the optimal orientation in the gimbal?
Here's my plan: Build a really tall vehicle where the driver sits at the top. Just before start of the race, it starts to tip over to the left. Once the driver is over the exact center of the track, the car can drive around as fast as it wants. The driver stays in place and only experiences rotation.
That's what I was thinking!
That centrifuge thing makes me think, what if you create a very long vehicle with the wheels on one end and the driver suspended in the liquid in the other end such that the vehicles turning effect has lesser effect on the driver
This channel is an absolute winner. I'm surprised it hasn't been established earlier.
I'm so ecstatic you're on RUclips now, Randall. This platform needs people like you to steward the unshittification of the platform.
Yoooo I remember reading your book when I was a kid, man wow I didn't know you had a yt channel that makes alot of sense
ahh, the refreshing hum of intelligent content. thank you, xkcd. I was a fan of the webcomic back in the day.
I didn't know XKCD was on youtube. This is great!
I love this and your books
I didn;t know there was a YT channel for xkcd... Subscribed!
Funny enough, when I designed my monergol (based on TATP and acetone), I too devised it couldn't be used in a vehicle because the acceleration would be unbearable (on top of the risks of explosion). It works pretty well in in rockets, but can't carry anything because pretty much everything melts in it (especially the electronics) due to acceleration and final speed, so I ended up making a mini-howitzer, with a tiny range (a few meters at best).
For the magnetic accelerator, that's not so simple. I tried to oppose magnets to make a frictionless rotor and discovered that such an arrangement tends to keep magnets "locked" one above the other (though repulsing each other). Either you are able to change the polarity dynamically (with an electro magnet), or have a different number of magnets on the stator and the rotor. While the locking effect is not so strong, it's still not verry efficient...
Ive been a big fan of the book series, and when I discovered that there is a youtube channel about What If, I was hooked!
Loved your take on this wild question from Hunter! It's really cool to think about. The human body ends up being the speed breaker.
I always loved these articles, but the highlight of converting to video? It's the voice foley in the background, having an absolute blast.
This channel rocks so hard. It reminds me of Minute Physics but with it's own personality. (I love both channels.)
MinutePhysics used to collab with xkcd a couple of times. Also, if you checked the credits/the about page on the channel... These videos are also produced by the MinutePhysics guys ;)
What-If's coming to RUclips. Nice.
Hey Randall, do a video on the "mole of moles" one or the light-speed diamond one!
Oh dang, I totally missed that Henry Reich was the writer & director for this! That's fantastic, love his work!
You sound just like my old physics teacher…always had a compelling example and explaining all possible variants. Always interesting lessons
One of the best scientific and humorous youtubers out there.
I hope you keep making videos
You are my favourite channel
Man those videos are amazing
Yay! I'm so glad this channel exists!
This reminded me of a cartoon from early 2000's. It was about nascar racing where they did all sorts of crazy things with the cars and tracks, like rocket engines etc.
Nice touch having Buddy Baker and Bill Elliott's actual Daytona cars on the podium at 2:15.
I'm so glad Randall has finally made it to RUclips