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Post by serpwidgets on Oct 31, 2012 21:18:56 GMT
I've seen lots of discussion on this but never any visually applied math to it, so I did that myself. The result I got (by moving a rectangle through rain falling at various rates) was a curve where it is better to run than walk, but also with diminishing advantage with increased speed. Here's a graph showing the results using no wind, head wind, and tail wind.  The javascript I wrote to accomplish this is on the web, if anyone is interested I can supply a link.  |
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Post by OziRiS on Oct 31, 2012 21:31:55 GMT
Looks good. You might want to supplement it with a little info on what's what in your graphs though. Which axis represents what?
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Post by serpwidgets on Oct 31, 2012 23:07:09 GMT
The Y axis is number of raindrops collided with, scaled so that the highest value is at the top. The X axis is walking/running speed with each grid being 0.5 meters/second. (The far left data point for 0.0 would be infinity.) Average walking speed (1.25 m/s) is the green line. The blue lines represent raindrop vertical (terminal) velocities at various drop sizes: 0.5 mm, 1, 2, 2.6, 4, and 5 mm. In reading discussions all over the place I found that the most common misconception (which I also held) is the idea that going faster will somehow have you running into more water horizontally, when in fact that amount is equal regardless of your speed. (At least with an idealized rectangular person.) The visualizer/algorithm is on my site ( serpwidgets.com/myths/runinrain.htm) since I can't embed that into a post. |
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