I was watching a SciFi tv show where large objects had an outer speed limit of 18000 kph and that got me wondering what things in everyday life are faster than even 500 kph.
I know bullets can be fast, but they are not exactly everyday life (at least in my life).
I included mass for obvious relativistic reasons.
Commercial airliners (800 - 950 km/h). By far the fastest “everyday” experience for a human is flying.
The tips of the turbine fan blades are going much faster than the plane itself.
Do you know any rough numbers?
According to this document, the Trent XWB from Rolls Royce has a fan diameter of 3m and a reference rotational speed of 2700 rpm for the low pressure stage, which would result in a blade tip speed of 424.1 m/s or 1526.8 km/h according to this calculator
I know that some generator turbines go ~3600 rpm
If my (admittedly super rusty) math is right if we assume a radius of 1 meter which would mean a circumference of ~6.28 meters. In that case the tips of the turbines would be moving:
6.28 * 3600 =22,608 meters per minute.
Please feel free to rip up my math as I’m going on little sleep at the moment.
Search-fu gives me 377 m/s or 1357 km/h.
Gotcha, so I wasn’t too far off.