What’s The Fastest A Car Can Go? | Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains...

What’s the fastest a car can accelerate? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly break down the physics behind a car’s maximum acceleration.

What’s the highest possible acceleration for a car? We go over the physics of how a car accelerates and the interplay between air, gravity, and friction. How fast can an object in free fall go from 0-60? Plus, find out the cool ways that race cars hack physics to accelerate faster.

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Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!

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00:00 - Highest Acceleration For A Vehicle
04:48 - Aerodynamics & 1G
09:40 - Jet Engines On Land

[AdrianSanabria]

Oh man, there's a great opportunity for a part 2 of this conversation. Sub-3 second cars have almost become common, especially with electric cars, and not on prepared surfaces either. The McMurtry and the variable speed fan system is particularly interesting, along with other cars that depend on the venturi effect. In this episode, they barely touched on the impact of active and passive aero. Deceleration is also a fun topic, as there are many cars with active aero tricks there. Then there's the benefits of driving 2 wheels versus 4 in achieving the maximum grip on launch, the complicated launch systems and procedures sports cars have now, and treaded vs slick tires increasing contact patch with the surface.

So much to continue this conversation!

[rikardo]

At one point in history of F1, the cars actually accelerated faster from 100 km/h to 200 km/h, than 0-100 mark. It was incredibly difficult to not spin the wheels from 0-100 and subsequently loose time

[cobhc]

I'm gonna demand that Chuck Nice be on with every special guest episode 💯

[renaca]

The McMurtry Spéirling does 0-60 in 1.4 seconds thanks to a system of fans that push the car into the road.

[noahman]

I think we need a follow up video to explain the accel and decel times that seem to beat the rule. Rimac and Tesla for example on Matt Watson's channel CarWow are pulling greater than 1G. We are dying here in the comment section for a Tyson explanation. (Oh, and one more thing...I was hoping you were going to mention the fan cars that suck the car to the ground to gain huge traction while not increasing the mass).

[panvomacka]

Some production cars can achieve sub 3s 0-60 (or over 1G acceleration), because they utilize similar tricks that the top fuel dragsters do - they temporarily increase the stickiness of the tires. The road surface is never completely flat - it is rough with small imperfections, acting a bit like a gear rack. And the tire is deformed and pushed down by the weight transfer of the car and some clever suspension, so that it acts a bit like that pinion gear at the gear rack. So the friction coefficient is a bit greater than 1. All of this was also mentioned in the video.
However those cars are pushing the usability limit and it cannot get much quicker than that. We know that dragsters can achieve much more than 1G acceleration, but no one actually wants to be driving a dragster on the street.

[giridhar]

To be honest I initially didn't like Chuck cracking jokes while Neil deGrasse Tyson was explaining something, but now I can't even watch a single episode without him . 🙌

[Budgy.Derpy]

Would love to see Neil and the boys interview a F1 driver or engineer 😊

[Pros]

Check out Gordon Murray's T.33 and T.50 based on the Brabham BT46B F1 car in 1978 which has a fan on the car's rear. This fan extracts air from underneath the car, producing heaps of downforce while it's at a standstill, and of course adding to the downforce as the car accellerates. The original car in 1978 was disqualified after only one race and if I recall it was an entire 6 seconds faster per lap than its competitors.

[OmniphonProductions]

What I really love about Neil is that _consistently_ his lead-up communication is so good that, once he reaches his main point, it seems like an obvious thing I just never thought about before. "Well, _of course, _ maximum acceleration is 1G; beyond that, you lose traction because the wheels are spinning faster that gravity is pulling you down. DUH!"

[mikefelty]

Even with tires spinning it's achievable. There are people that do "hard tire" drag racing on non prepped surfaces that still see above 1g and sub 3 second 0-60 times even without sticky tires digging into the surface. Weight tranfer and suspension setup are huge factors with most of those guys being able to accelerate like that without much traction.

[TheGaminPowerhouse]

I’m not an expert but I’d say the mentioned limit of 0-60 in 3 seconds accounts for a constant amount of torque (i.e. throttle). Modern cars, especially electric cars, have launch systems that allow an increased torque output as speed on the way to 60 increases, allowing the other forces other than friction to go into effect and increase the rate at which a car can accelerate.

[kevinkevin]

Great video!! Many car manufacturers use “rollout” to achieve a quicker 0-60/62 time for their spec sheet. They don’t start timing until the car is already in motion. The channel, “Engineering Explained, ” has a good video demonstrating this as well as factors limiting a cars quickness. With equations 😊

[NoahFroio]

Gary, you nailed the NHRA model... those 11, 000 HP Top Fuel dragsters (with the T-Rex fron t wheels) pull up to 5 G's on launch, due to the super sticky slick tires and the burnout warming the aforementioned tires up to increase traction to the point of insane.

[chaosmarklar]

Top fuel NHRA drag racing is the perfect balance of acceleration and traction (friction), the vehicles are designed for the maximum amount of downward force on the rear wheels that get heated up and become sticky in the pre-race burnout

[eycchu]

The keywords are "tires digging into the road". The same arguments were proposed by physicists in the 60's, that dragsters will not get below about 9 seconds in the 1/4 mile, because that's about 1G of acceleration. But that's because they took a too simplistic view of friction and reduced the concept of friction to a single number; a coefficient. "Friction" is actually the interference between the microscopic structures of two surfaces in contact with each other. To break friction, the surfaces must shear off their microscopic structures.

Similarly, tire traction is due to the soft rubber flowing into the crevices in the pavement, providing grip (adhesion). Take this to the extreme, end you end up with the gears and rack teeth embedded in the ground that Dr. Tyson mentioned, and the limit of acceleration would be the strength of the teeth. This is why the dragsters use huge tires; to put more rubber against the pavement for more strength (cohesion).

Also, the tire treads need to be soft, but not necessarily "sticky", as that means it will take energy to peel the backside of the tread off the pavement.

[jacobpaterson]

You need to look into the McMurtry Speedster & The T50. Both have fans in the underbody that increase downforce significantly. Mind bending to watch these tech’s effect on a car.

[robertcatuara]

Three cars that are sub 2 second
Rimac Nevera – 1.85 seconds (0-60mph)
Lucid Air Sapphire – 1.89 seconds (0-60mph)
Pininfarina Battista – 1.9 seconds (0-62mph)

[PolarisRider]

Just a couple of minutes into this and looking at comments too and I noticed something that it doesn't appear many people have much knowledge about. Instant center and anti squat, it's what allows dragsters to accelerate like they do, pro stock drag cars to accelerate like they do, and semi trucks to accelerate like they do (also comes into play on everyday vehicles just not as much effect) instant center is the point the rear axle (in a rwd vehicle) is lifting on the front of the vehicle ( it's the rotation about the center of the rear axle and the point it is being lifted at) and anti squat is a part of the geometry related to how the rear suspension reacts, if it has anti squat built into the geometry it means that instead of the rear of the vehicle "squatting" when it accelerates under power it actually stands up and pushes the rear tires into the ground harder. Add in adjustments to instant center and you can increase the amount of weight that is actually applied down into the ground on the rear tires which increases the contact patch of the rear tires which increases the amount of force needed to break the traction between the tires and the road surface... some of that may be included in the "Engineering the world's fastest cars" video I'm going to watch right after this

[isatousarr]

Terminal velocity is a fascinating concept in physics, describing the maximum speed an object can reach when falling through a fluid, such as air. It occurs when the force of gravity is balanced by the drag force, causing the object to fall at a constant speed. This equilibrium creates a unique dynamic where heavier objects can have different terminal velocities compared to lighter ones. But what factors exactly determine how quickly an object reaches its terminal velocity, and how can we manipulate these factors in practical applications like skydiving or engineering?