this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
34 points (94.7% liked)

No Stupid Questions

36151 readers
1232 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I drive a small automatic car. For the most part, it struggles a bit with steep uphills, and picks up speed when going downhill. That's to be expected.

But then I noticed some downhills actually slow it down. I've noticed during a two-hour motorway trip I often do to visit family, there are some specific downhills, not all, just some, where my car always slows down and I have no idea why.

Ideas?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] captainjaneway 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've always assumed it's something in the engine. But I also wonder if it's some sort of friction based math? I have heard most cars are most fuel efficient at 55mph or so. My town has a large hill which my car can "coast" down with no gas required. However, like you, it stops increasing its speed around 55mph. It doesn't seem to go any faster without me stepping on the gas. I don't notice anything different about the car. It just seems to stop accelerating.

And if I hit the gas, it seems to re-settle back to 55mph.

I sometimes wonder if fuel efficiency being at 55mph is tied to friction of tires on asphalt. And maybe even on a steep hill, typical cars just cant overcome the kinetic friction to continue speeding up. Obviously the steepness of the hill matters, but roads have pretty stringent rules about grades. So we have an upper bound of what's "reasonable" based on whatever the steepest allowable grade is.

I've also had this question. I'd love to know the answer!

[โ€“] Takumidesh 2 points 1 year ago

It's more to do with gearing and wind resistance.

Wind resistance increases dramatically as you go faster, (coefficient * frontal area) squared.

The rolling resistance from your tires is trivial in comparison.