Autoblog

I'd guess that with a flipped wing, the car would nose over since I believe the STI is slightly nose heavy and the added uplift would only make it worse. It would make for a really cool trick if he could do a nose flip in his car though. Travis Pastrana should try for that, seeing as he's already mastered the dirt bike back flips.

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Brilliant!

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Nose heavy means the nose will fall faster?

Galileo proved this is incorrect 400 years ago.

Gravity affects all objects equally, regardless of weight.

Sheesh.

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Leave the physics to those who actually understand physics. Leave the reading to those who can actually read as well.

1) no one said the nose will fall faster than the tail

2) that doesn't mean the nose will not begin to drop before the tail does

If you don't understand the difference between those two things, stick the advice about leaving physics and reading to those who can.

sheesh

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You apparently can't read speedball's post. He says the car already will go nose down because it's nose heavy. No, it goes nose down because the nose leaves the ramp first and thus begins falling while the back is still traveling up the ramp.

It wouldn't go less nose over if the engine were in the back. It's not an issue of how much the nose weighs, because objects (ends of a car) of different weights do not fall at different speeds.

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Gentlemen,

Speedball3's comment was related to the propensity of the nose to head down faster because of lift that would be generated at the rear of the vehicle by my proposed flipping of the wing plane to provide said lift.

Relative to speed of the fall. I am not a physicist, but I do believe that Newton showed, not that all objects fall at the same speed, they clearly do not, but that all objects accelerate at the same speed ina fall (32 ft/ sec x sec).

Thus, while a Subaru and a goose feather will accelerate at the same speed in a free fall, the goose feather's ultimate speed will be limited - by the effect of aerodynamic drag - to a much lower terminal velocity than the Subaru.

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The car weighs so much compared to the bottom area of it, it won't make any difference in practice. It's not a feather.

Compared to the plywood, the car weighs 16x as much with a wind area of about 3x as much. In in the plywood case, your weight is already greatly overwhelming the wind resistance. Watch Mythbusters, they tested it.

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I watched that mythbusters, that is why I used that as an exaggerated example :)

Do you remember how out of control the plywood became? It went out of control because of the center of gravity being out of whack with the fulcrum, agreed?

How big of an affect is debatable. Obviously the car has more mass so it would take more to move it at the same rate. Imagine putting a piece of plywood perfectly balanced on a point and moving it up and down - now imagine doing the same with a subaru. You can still move the subaru up and down - it just moves slower with the same amount of force. Putting 200lbs, however, in the trunk of the subaru will definately make it move a significant amount in the time that car was in the air.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUgvn99opdc

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