G Force

Force (actually, acceleration) can be measured in "g's". In case you're not familiar with this measurement, it measures the amount of acceleration that is exerted on an object. One "g" is the amount of acceleration that is exerted on an object by gravity when it is at the surface of the earth. If the object is moved out into space farther away from the earth, where the gravity is not as strong, the object will have less than a "g" of force acting on it.

Fighter jet pilots are familiar with this measurement. If one engages in a maneuver which causes a force on his or her body that is twice as much as what he or she would normally experience because of gravity on the ground, he or she would say that he or she has experienced a force of "two g's".

One g is equal to 32 feet per second per second. This means that an object in free fall near the Earth's surface, if not affected by air friction or any factor other than gravity (such as hitting the ground!), would be traveling 32 feet per second (72 MPH) faster at this instant than it was traveling one second ago.

Question: If an astronaut were to get in a spaceship and start accelerating that spaceship at a rate of speed so as to produce one g of force on her body (that is, accelerate at the rate of 32 per second per second), how long would it take to reach the speed of light? (Ignore the effects of relativity, if any. This is a straight mathematical calculation problem.)

Answer:

Answer: Approximately 355 days

Calculation: The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Since there are 5280 feet in a mile, we multiply by 5280 to get: 186,000 x 5280 = 982 million feet per second. Since we are accelerating by 32 feet per second for every second of time, we divide by 32 to get the total number of seconds of time that we must travel to reach this speed: 982 million/32 = 30.7 million seconds. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day; therefore, there are 60 x 60 x 24 = 86,400 seconds in a day. Simply dividing the total number of seconds to reach this speed by the number of seconds in a day gives us the number of days: 30.7 million/ 86,400 = 355.32 days.