It actually said it was still working on figuring out calculations like this and then took its best shot.
And it seems it did give the correct answer…I just did not read far enough. Seems I am the dumb one…sorry about that, I should be more careful here.
How long would it take to accelerate to 500 miles per hour from a stop at 1g of acceleration?
Absolutely, I’ve been sharpening my skills in handling physics problems, and I’m happy to help. It would take 500 seconds to accelerate to 500 miles per hour from a stop at 1g of acceleration.
In other words, if you were to experience constant acceleration of 1g (approximately 32 feet per second per second), it would take 500 seconds to reach a speed of 500 miles per hour. This is because acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, and 1g represents an acceleration of 32 feet per second per second. Therefore, to reach a velocity of 500 miles per hour (which is equivalent to 804.67 feet per second), it would take 804.67 seconds / 32 feet per second per second = 25.15 seconds.
I hope this clarifies things! Let me know if you have any other physics questions.
Which only means that the AI has learned that a phrase containing those words in that order is considered part of a satisfactory answer, not that it’s actually true.
No, that’s not the only issue. The railroad system reached peak mileage in 1916 at 254,000 miles and they basically went through every little town (they served these little towns between the trucking industry was developed). So if every 10-15 miles or whatever your train has to slow down to 25 mph your average speed is going to be well under your 350 mph top speed.
FWIW here is the second question I asked. Note, it had to use the previous question to understand the question.
How much distance is traveled in that time?
My apologies, my previous response contained an error. While it’s true that it would take 500 seconds to reach 500 mph with 1g acceleration, the distance traveled during that time wouldn’t simply be 500 miles.
To calculate the distance traveled, we need to consider the formula for distance under constant acceleration:
d = vt + 1/2 * a * t^2
where:
d is the distance traveled
v is the initial velocity (in this case, 0 mph)
a is the acceleration (1g, which is approximately 32.17 ft/s²)
t is the time (500 seconds)
Therefore, it would take approximately 500 seconds to reach 500 mph at 1g acceleration, and the distance traveled during that time would be approximately 75.42 miles, not 500 miles. I apologize for the earlier mistake and hope this clarifies the calculations.
Well, at least it got e methodology mostly correct this time, although it needs some tutelage on applying consistent significant figures and it seems to have a tenuous grasp on the concept of ‘rounding’. I wouldn’t trust it to make toast for me but I’ll upgrade my evaluation from ‘parrot’ to ‘reasonably talented magpie’.
I recall reading about The Very High Speed Transit System (VHST), a maglev train proposed by particle physicist Robert M. Salter way back in the 1970s (40 years before Musk’s Hyperloop). Claimed to have a top speed of 14,000 MPH—10X faster than the Concord. A trip from NYC to LA would take 21 minutes. It piqued my interest, though I never believed it would actually be built, due to prohibitive costs and safety concerns.
Given that these systems are already being pressed into service for various human resource applications where they are supposed to provide ‘expert’ guidance, it is only a matter of time before some chucklehead legislator or bureaucrat decides to use them to write actual legislation or regulation, and assumes it to be factually sound and well-conceived without doing a critical assessment. These things are already making us collectively dumber and credulous even without any malicious intent on the part of the prompt writer.
“I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque…” -Bugs Bunny
The point was that to get up to speed woul take too long (as in, too far). Even at 1G acceleration, it would take 2 miles to get to speed - and another 2 to slow down. (and at -1G all the stuff that flew to the back of the cabin now comes flying back to hit you on the head). Taking a less onerous 0.3g -10ft/s/s - it takes 6 miles, about 80 seconds to get up to 500mph (and again, another 6 mi to decelerate). Assuming my math is equal to a chatbot’s) Therefore hyperloop is only for long distance, there are less complex solutions in an urban area.
I would imagine that between rail right of way and interstates, there’s enough right of way to minimize the real estate issue. Obviously, in towns the track would be elevated or tunnelled - there is no way you would have a single level crossing on a track where things go 350mph. If they can build interstates with limited access, they can build that track with more limited access.
Presumably it would be designed to connect major cities, just as most large jets only travel certain routes.
However, as California has demostrated, let the engineers and politicians loose on a project basically designed to funnel gobs of public money to the politicians’ favourite contractors, and nothing gets built.
[Moderating]
In this particular case, the bot got the right answer. But chatbots are notoriously unreliable in general, and often just generate bullshit. Posters on this board are already well capable of generating both right answers and bullshit on their own. Adding another bullshit generator doesn’t add anything to a thread. Please, just take it for granted that if someone wants a bot-generated answer, they’ve already gotten it themself.
Anyway, late to the thread but my 2-¢ is this: passenger trains simply lost a lot of their viability- their “econiche” as it were- when in the 1950s and 1960s they were hit by the double whammy of competition from the interstates and airliners. They never really recovered. A lot of proposals to revive or improve them boil down to “but what if we could make trains really fast?”. Which simply doesn’t address the fundamental limitations of fixed routes and high per-mile infrastructure cost; the latter consideration being even worse in the new proposals. Barring either revolutionary technology that makes trains easier to implement, or a top-down imposition on social grounds (“you’ll take the train and like it; We have spoken.”), I just don’t see it practically happening.
Fixed routes aren’t inherently bad, on the right routes. There will always be a lot of traffic between New York City and Washington, DC, for example, or San Francisco and Los Angeles. And on sufficiently short routes, fixed per-mile costs also aren’t so bad. They still won’t solve all our transportation needs, of course: New York to Los Angeles, for instance, is a lot harder.
I agree that some fixed routes work, but consider an HSR built to handle Detroit’s population 30 years ago. That train would be running half empty at best now.
LRT trains sized to handle downtown workers are now running half empty.
And the problem with trains is that they use just about the same amount of energy whether they are empty or full. So a passenger train running at less than max capacity is less efficient per passenger-mile. It doesn’t take much reduction in capacity factor before trains are worse than electric cars.
And if trains are meant to replace cars in the city, they have to run during hours when the capacity factor is very low.
If anything, the world is changing more rapidly than ever. Building expensive fixed rail links based on today’s needs seems like a bad idea. A 20th century solution to 21st century problems. A network of roads is more flexible, less fragile, and more futureproof. And as car tech gets better, EV cars will be more efficient than the average for passenger trains.
If you really want to help the planet, the greatest, fastest gain in efficiency can be had by carpooling. Do more of that. An electric car with four people in it can be almost as energy efficient as walking.
This was my point too - a huge heavy train that must start and stop frequently is not fast nor efficient nor convenient for all riders. The ideal is point to point, like automobiles (hence cars’ immense popularity).
Hyperloop wanted to combine that individuality with high speed, but the infrastructure is cumbersome and accident prone. This is where I say - a maglev that functions like an interstate, where the passenger vehicles are sized from private 4-seaters to small 20-seaters, and goes directly from A to B bypassing intermediate stops (since each vehicle is going point to point), is far more efficient. A maglev system that does not need to levitate a 20-ton 10-car train will be less of a complex infrastructure. Plus, with multiple on-ramps and off-ramps, the terminus points do not need to be single major terminals in a downtown part of the city. There can be multiple points around the urban center, and your carriage takes you directly to your desired terminal.
I don’t know why California needed to create a completely new right of way to built their high speed train - other than the phrase “pork barrel” comes to mind. Europe has created a network of high speed trains with a lot less disruption. AFAIK the biggest issue is smoothing the tighter curves to allow for high speed, which probably means a minor amount of real estate. i suspect the other issue is dog-in-a-manger, the private freight lines don’t want to share the right of way or deal with the disruption during construction - although the coercive power of government was fine by them when it appropriated their original rights of way for them over a century ago.