Acceleration

In the movie Rush (2013) about the rivalry between Formula 1 drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt in the 1970s there is a scene where Niki Lauda and his future wife Marlene need to hitch a ride from two Italian men. The men lend the couple the car but insist that Niki drive. Marlene doesn’t yet know who Niki Lauda is but convinces him to demonstrate his Formula 1 skills.

How fast does the car accelerate under Niki Lauda’s driving?

Solution: We can see on the speedometer that the car’s velocity changes from 30 to 65. Since the scene is in Italy we can assume this is in km/h. If we time how long it takes for this change to occur we get about 1s. Changing the velocities to m/s we get 8.3m/s to 18m/s. So the acceleration of the car is

a = {{\Delta v}\over{\Delta t}} = {18m/s - 8.3m/s \over{1s}} = 9.7 m/s^2.

This is almost equal to the acceleration of gravity on Earth,  9.81 m/s^2.

 

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