How fast does an (unladen Blue) Angel fly? July 26, 2015
Posted by mareserinitatis in Fargo, math, younger son.Tags: airsho, birds, blue angels, monty python, speed
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This weekend, the Blue Angels were in town to perform at the Fargo AirSho. While we were watching them today, I made some comment about how amazing it is that they can keep such perfect formation despite the high speeds. The younger son asked how fast they fly, and I responded that they could go up to a few hundred miles per hour. He came back with:
I bet they’re flying at a trillion nanometers per second.
I honestly had no idea since that required not only a conversion to more reasonable units for such a measurement as well as the fact that we’d have to hop between metric and English units.
I decided to check it out, and it turns out he wasn’t far off. The Blue Angels use the F/A-18 Hornet, which wikipedia gives a top speed of Mach 1.8 or 1,190 miles per hour. The equivalent speed in nanometers/second is 531,977,600,000. In other words, it’s half a trillion nanometers per second, so the younger son was only off by a factor of two when they’re traveling at top speed (which they obviously weren’t).
That’s a wee bit faster than an unladen European Swallow, which has an airspeed velocity of about 11,176,000,000 nm/s (based on Wolfram Alpha’s estimate of 25 mph). I’m sure you were just dying to know that.
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