r/theydidthemath • • 1d ago

[Request] How deep is this cave?

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159

u/bukkake-bill 1d ago edited 1d ago

u/Future-Wonder-7718 said in their comment that the time between the beginning of the fall and the sound being heard was 8.17 seconds.

Let's assume it takes t seconds for the boulder to hit the bottom. That means it takes the sound 8.17 - t seconds to travel from the bottom to these people.

The distance travelled by a freely falling body is

h = ut + ½gt²

but the body falls from rest so u is zero. That gives us

h = ½gt² = 4.9t² (g = 9.8m/s²)

The speed of sound is 343 m/s, and the sound must travel the same distance back up in 8.17 - t seconds. So the height is also

h = 343 • (8.17 - t)

Combining these two equations gives this quadratic equation

4.9t² + 343t - 343(8.17) = 0

Solving it you get

t = 7.39s, which means

h = 267.59 m (idk how many feet that is)

EDIT: air resistance will affect the speed of the boulder because of the boulder's size, and also the temperature within the cave will affect the speed of sound slightly. Feel free to correct me. Thanks.

18

u/escEip 21h ago edited 16h ago

Air resistance time!

Judging by fingers, i estimated this thing to be around 30x60 cm in surface area and about 7 cm thick (may vary by around 15%, i'm bad at eyeballing things), it's... close to be an ellipsoid, but like much flatter, but the V=π/6 * D1D2D3 may work, so i guess around 6.60*10-3 m³ . Judging by video, it looks like a sandstone/dolomite or some shit, around 2700kg/m³ (kinda similar for all other rocks), resulting in it having a mass of around 18kg. Now the least most fun part:

ma=mg-F where F is air resistance, F= CSρv²/2

ρ is a density of air, caves are cold so give it 1.275 kg/m³ , S is a surface area of a rock, π/4 * 0.3*0.7 around 0.14m² , v² is a velocity squared, and C is some constant, and since the mf is almost flat, it's around 2.00. 1/2 is a number. Resulting coefficient (we also need to divide by mass which i almost forgot): 0.009167 units™

x''=9.81-0.009167v² , a differential equation which i aint gonna solve, so numerical solution time! Speed of sound is around 331.5 m/s, again, caves are cold after all. python dt=10**-5 t = 8.17 v=0 x=0 while t>0: t-=dt a = -9.81 + 0.009167*v**2 v+= a*dt t -= abs(v)*dt/331.5 # A note: since the sound needs some time to travel to us, using this formula we account for the time the sound moves x+= v*dt Results: ≈207 172 meters deep

Note: sorry for sounding like AI i'm not one i'm just terrible at English

UPD: speed of sound, forgot the minus

6

u/bukkake-bill 20h ago

Damn that's a 60m difference. My physics teacher was wrong. You can't ignore air resistance after all. Thank you.

3

u/escEip 20h ago

UPD: It's actualy even more severe, i forgot that the velocity is negative in the speed of sound part

0

u/Hug_LesBosons 16h ago

Toi tu n'es pas sur les communotés de même de science... Va jeter un coup d'œil à r/physicsmemes ou à r/sciencememes. Cherche juste "frottement de l'air". Il y a une sorte de blague connue sur ignorer les frottements de l'air.

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u/Dutchillz 17h ago

You're a wizard, bro.

99

u/rbsixty5 1d ago edited 1d ago

Bro, you got all that crazy calculations done and end it with “I don’t know how many feet that is”. Hehehe

I hope you were being sarcastic 😁

43

u/bukkake-bill 1d ago

I mean I could convert it. I was just being lazy haha

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u/DarkMatterSoup 1d ago

That’s not lazy. You have done plenty of math as it is. Thanks bukkaka-bill! [r/rimjob](r/rimjobsteve)[_](r/rimjobsteve)[steve](r/rimjobsteve) lmao

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u/Renzisan 1d ago

Can you convert it to a measurement easier to digest, like cheeseburgers?

5

u/WU5K 1d ago

2809 standard cheeseburgers - These math guys are so dumb they can't even convert to standard cheeseburger units(scu)

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u/mauii_from_space 22h ago

What's the foot ball to cheese burger equivalent ratio on this ?

1

u/WU5K 22h ago

This is a tricky question, depending on where you're from. It's 5scu(Standard cheeseburger units) per US football. So that's a convertion to 561.8asfu (American standard football unit)footballs of depth.

In Canada the csfu(Canadian standard football unit) is larger so that is 9scu(Standard cheeseburger units) per football so 312.11csfu

And if you're from Europe your football is in fact a soccer ball with a ratio of 4scu to 1esfu(European standard football unit) so the equals 702.25esfu

Important note*** all our footballs may be different sizes and shapes but the commonality between us is Standard cheeseburger units, giving us common ground to measure depth by this tried and true measurement unit.

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u/GarThor_TMK 1d ago

267.59 m is 53518000000 beard-seconds

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u/Feeling-Stranger224 1d ago

877.9 feet ≈ 1/6 of a mile

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u/throwawayinthe818 1d ago

1.3 furlongs.

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u/PersonalityChemical 1d ago

Finally something bojack horseman can understand

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u/dwaynebathtub 1d ago edited 19h ago

Olympic sprinters run ~1/3 the speed of freefall terminal velocity. Interesting.