Comment by saimiam
10 hours ago
If something at rest is accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2, how long in seconds will it take to reach 10% of c? Answer to the nearest order of magnitude - will it take approximately 1000, 10k, 100k, 1000k seconds?
I’m sure you know this is an exponential growth question but have no intuition of the answer.
That is a linear growth problem whose answer is very easy to intuit.
It’s not a linear growth problem. Acceleration is quadratic.
As per your intuition, how many seconds later will you hit 10% of c?
You must be joking. A high schooler with a few hours of physics classes can intuit the answer.
How is this a joke?
Knowing exponents and how to apply it is not the same as having any intuition about what the actual value of a certain exponential function will be at a certain point and when it crosses a threshold.
Until special relativity kicks in to completely invalidate whatever intuition you have about this problem.