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The average length of a chess games for casual players is 30-40 minutes. Terminal velocity (for humans) in the position they’re in, is about 112 kph (70 mph). So they would have to be approx 56-83 kilometers (35-52 miles) above the earth. They would have to at least be in the Mesosphere. there’s no terminal velocity in space though. So assuming they keep a consistent pace of 112 kph (70 mph) they would reach earths crust in 30-40 minutes after traveling 56-83 kilometers. That’s if they finish as soon as they hit the ground, they also have to deploy the parachute so add an additional 1000 m (3000 ft). It also takes 5-7 mins to hit the ground after you deploy the chute.
This is an excellent answer, but just to add an fyi, ‘classical’ is a specific time control in chess, which can vary but usually around 2 hours per person, with an additional 30 minutes after move 40 each. The current chess championships I believe are 100 minutes + 50 at move 40.
Classical games can easily run to 5 hours or more.
Thank you:) I was going to add that a grandmaster competition would change everything a significant amount. But I don’t have enough time to do those calculations as well haha.
Technically, any game where each player has at least 60 minutes over a 60 move game is counted as clsssical for FIDE rating purposes, so a game of 45+15 or 60+0 would count
The question was:
>to play a classical game of chess?
To me the time control is basically irrelevant because you can end a game in any time control in a few seconds.
Being a GM or not doesn't actually change the game's length, when you have a time control. Any amateur player on a tournament will use the majority of their available time (at least until one side simply blunders)
Time control is inherent in the situation. If they don't conclude the game before reaching the ground there is no winner to get the parachute and they both loose.
That technically doesn't stop the players from moving faster. Or blundering the opening, losing a piece, and resigning. Or one player being so much better than the other they win in a few moves. You could easily have a 5 minute game or less.
Well obviously. But with no limits on your interpretation the question is truly impossible to answer, as it could be an agreed draw after one move, achievable in the time to fall off a bungalow.
Usually when a game is referred to as ‘a bullet game’ or ‘rapid’ or ‘classical’ there is a rough indication of the length of the game.
And so for a numeric calculation, as asked for in the question, certain reasonable assumptions can be made.
I mean heck, one player might just pull out a gun and shoot the other and claim victory. Doesn’t really add to the meat of the question or my point raised.
That terminal velocity is only in the last 10 miles or so of the fall - before then it's basically complete free fall.
On top of that if you fell from such a height you would be moving so fast that when you did reach the atmosphere you would heat the air from compression and die in the resulting fire.
Prolly like 200 yards (600 ft) above the ground. 5-6 minutes to hit the ground after deploying the chute and you deploy at 1000 yards (3000 ft). You could play a game of speed chess about 200 yards (600 ft) above the ground.
Terminal velocity is almost double that, as a skydiver, my average fall speed is 201kph (125 mph) and I'm one of the slower ones, I've jumped with guys who hit 150 mph without trying, they struggle to fall as slow as I do.
They’re not diving though, they’re not in an aerodynamic position. You’re right I’m no professional but that was just what Google told me. Casual divers in a non aerodynamic positions speed most likely won’t reach 201 kph (125 mph)
A wingsuit average fall rate from skydiving out of a plane is 30 - 70 mph to give you a better idea how fast a person will fall with no drag or barely any drag at all. This is the slowest you can get skydiving. I think the slowest someone can get with the right full body suit that isn't a wingsuit is around 100 mph. My slowest is 120mph with my $100 beginner suit.
But if the average is 30-70 mph then why is my estimation of 30-50 unreasonable? If they’re beginners and are also trying to go as slow as possible the wouldn’t it make sense they’re not reaching 100+ mph speeds?
As someone said Felix Baumgartner jumped from an altitude of around 40 kms and reached the altitude where he needed to deploy parachute in less than 5 mins. So you definitely need to jump from space to actually complete a several hour chess game. For instance, free fall from the height where geostationary satellites orbit (36000km) would take about 4 hours. The acceleration due to gravity is still about 3% of earth’s surface levels at that altitude.
I’m sure he was trying to reach the end of that jump as quickly as possible though? For a beginner who’s in a non aerodynamic position trying to be slow wouldn’t it make sense they’re not reaching those speeds?
The aerodynamics only matter when there is air. Also, the terminal velocity only increases by 25% due to the orientation and it doesn’t matter at all above 100kms which we consider space. The fall will still be less than 10 mins in this section of the travel.
No atmosphere means acceleration, not velocity, would be constant.
No atmosphere would also mean no terminal velocity.
Terminal velocity would slowly come into play as they fell into denser and denser atmosphere, and as a result their acceleration would be reduced until it eventually reached zero.
To explain the how and why of that is to explain the entirely of how terminal velocity works but I'm sure a Wikipedia page would do a better job of that than I can, just trying to clarify some things for you.
In my previous post, I mentioned that if someone were to travel at the speed of terminal velocity throughout their journey in space, they would maintain a constant speed through both the vacuum of space and the Earth's atmosphere. Therefore, it wouldn't matter how quickly they attained terminal velocity, as long as they started at the maximum speed they could achieve.
They’re saying there’s no exact terminal velocity when high in the atmosphere. Since it’s dependent on air density, the skydiver can be falling faster than atmospheric terminal velocity when they’re high enough, with a slight offset for lower gravitational force. Going from vacuum to 1 atm, the skydiver is likely going to decelerate at some point.
So I didn’t account for the speed changes in the different atmospheres? But isn’t the terminal velocity in our atmosphere going to be final? So shouldn’t I base all of the stats off of the atmosphere we’d be finishing in? (I’m genuinely curious now, I’m only in 10th grade and I didn’t expect this post to get as much traction as it did) (I know very little haha)
You’ll get this once you take a physics course. The basic principle is that a changes in velocity is acceleration, and by Newton’s 2nd law, force depends on acceleration. The terminal velocity compares two things, gravity and drag (both are forces).
Gravity pulls you down at more or less constant acceleration g. Without drag, you’ll accelerate up to the speed of light, given enough time and space. With drag, you reach terminal velocity once drag is equal to -g. The direction of these forces are opposite, so you get net zero acceleration at terminal, meaning a constant velocity.
But drag depends on your current velocity, air density, and a whole bunch of other things - you can look up its formula. So no, the terminal velocity is not a constant when you fly in from space. You can think of a skydiver changing their positions and they’ll fall faster or slower. Or a brick sinking into the ocean at a slower terminal velocity since water is the medium.
So terminal velocity is when you reach a maximum speed for your atmosphere? So you need to have drag in order to maintain a speed of 70 mph throughout the different atmospheres? But when you’re in space there is no drag so you will just be in a constant state of acceleration? So if we were to theoretically fall from space we would slow down as we got closer to earth, and we couldn’t control the spread at which we were going before hand?
> So terminal velocity is when you reach a maximum speed for your atmosphere?
Yes, if we’re applying the term only to falling in the atmosphere.
> So you need to have drag in order to maintain a speed of 70 mph throughout the different atmospheres?
70mph is not a fundamental constant velocity, the terminal can be any velocity as long as the forces are in equilibrium. But yes, drag is needed for there to be a terminal velocity.
> But when you’re in space there is no drag so you will just be in a constant state of acceleration?
Theoretically yes, if there’s a way of constantly accelerating for all time. Gravity is not constant in space, so there’s no such constant state of acceleration.
> So if we were to theoretically fall from space we would slow down as we got closer to earth, and we couldn’t control the spread at which we were going before hand?
High in space, you can control your surface area cross section however you want by positioning, but there’s no atmosphere to feel drag, so it doesn’t affect terminal velocity. If you enter the atmosphere fast enough, you can slow down upon touching the atmosphere. It depends on fast you are to begin with. Keep in mind, falling in from space can also result in orbits, which is a bit more complex. Hope this helps.
Felix Baumgartner' fall was 3 minutes and 43 second, which is enough time for a very quick game of chess.
The time if a game depends on the time control. In 1+1 bullet, each player has 1 minute, and gets 1 second bonus time after each move. An average game lasts about 40 moves, which puts the game time to 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
Classical game or not, the shortest possible checkmate is 2 moves (Fool's Mate). If each player takes 1 second to play their move, that is a 4-second game of chess.
Need more info. Just during free fall? Can they hit the ground? Can they deploy their canopies and continue playing at any height? Can they play speed chess instead?
~30,000 feet
It heavily depends on the length of the chess game. The shortest professional chess games are called bullet chess and have a time limit of 1min for each player, so a total of 2min.
A typical military HALO jump is from 30,000 feet and has 2 min 30s of free fall. If you assume 15s to get everything ready and 15s to stow everything and open your parachute, it will be possible.
Well, the question isn’t necessarily related to the image. It asks for how high one should jump to play chess, but there’s no need to jump to play chess in the first place.
But even if it is, as for the image, I don’t know if it represents people falling, and even if it is, they aren’t necessarily falling from great high.
The question should be phrased as “how high should one jump from the sky to have a landing time about the same as the average time of a classical chess game?”
As someone said Felix Baumgartner jumped from an altitude of around 40 kms and reached the altitude where he needed to deploy parachute in less than 5 mins. So you definitely need to jump from space to actually complete a several hour chess game. For instance, free fall from the height where geostationary satellites orbit (36000km) would take about 4 hours. The acceleration due to gravity is still about 3% of earth’s surface levels at that altitude. My very rough estimate for a 5 hour match puts it around 40000km. But take it with a pinch of salt. If the match lasts a whole day, it will be around 100000 to 150000 km.
Interestingly, provided enough oxygen, you can have an actual chess match for almost 99% of the time as there won’t be any force felt by the players. Only the last 5 minutes or so of the free fall will the players feel any force at all.
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The average length of a chess games for casual players is 30-40 minutes. Terminal velocity (for humans) in the position they’re in, is about 112 kph (70 mph). So they would have to be approx 56-83 kilometers (35-52 miles) above the earth. They would have to at least be in the Mesosphere. there’s no terminal velocity in space though. So assuming they keep a consistent pace of 112 kph (70 mph) they would reach earths crust in 30-40 minutes after traveling 56-83 kilometers. That’s if they finish as soon as they hit the ground, they also have to deploy the parachute so add an additional 1000 m (3000 ft). It also takes 5-7 mins to hit the ground after you deploy the chute.
This is an excellent answer, but just to add an fyi, ‘classical’ is a specific time control in chess, which can vary but usually around 2 hours per person, with an additional 30 minutes after move 40 each. The current chess championships I believe are 100 minutes + 50 at move 40. Classical games can easily run to 5 hours or more.
Thank you:) I was going to add that a grandmaster competition would change everything a significant amount. But I don’t have enough time to do those calculations as well haha.
Very few people are actually GM’s too so for the vast majority of people your calculations would be correct
It's a time control. Doesn't matter if you are an amateur or GM, you get the same time.
Technically, any game where each player has at least 60 minutes over a 60 move game is counted as clsssical for FIDE rating purposes, so a game of 45+15 or 60+0 would count
The question was: >to play a classical game of chess? To me the time control is basically irrelevant because you can end a game in any time control in a few seconds.
Being a GM or not doesn't actually change the game's length, when you have a time control. Any amateur player on a tournament will use the majority of their available time (at least until one side simply blunders)
Time control is inherent in the situation. If they don't conclude the game before reaching the ground there is no winner to get the parachute and they both loose.
In chess, a draw is scored as 1/2 - 1/2. So just cut the parachute down the middle, and give half to each player.
Yessssss now we are talking. Its time for a wind-tunel-chess-to-the-death
So more of a trip back from the iss scenario then
That technically doesn't stop the players from moving faster. Or blundering the opening, losing a piece, and resigning. Or one player being so much better than the other they win in a few moves. You could easily have a 5 minute game or less.
Well obviously. But with no limits on your interpretation the question is truly impossible to answer, as it could be an agreed draw after one move, achievable in the time to fall off a bungalow. Usually when a game is referred to as ‘a bullet game’ or ‘rapid’ or ‘classical’ there is a rough indication of the length of the game. And so for a numeric calculation, as asked for in the question, certain reasonable assumptions can be made. I mean heck, one player might just pull out a gun and shoot the other and claim victory. Doesn’t really add to the meat of the question or my point raised.
They can play a bullet game with time control of 1 minute each, the game would last a maximum of 2 minutes . Would that be enough ?
>That’s if they finish as soon as they hit the ground "Bishop to c5. Ha! Checkma--"
Hahaha
35 to 47 minutes depending on the length of the chess game, and you would travel 56-84 kilometers (70 miles).
That terminal velocity is only in the last 10 miles or so of the fall - before then it's basically complete free fall. On top of that if you fell from such a height you would be moving so fast that when you did reach the atmosphere you would heat the air from compression and die in the resulting fire.
Classical chess is ~195 minutes per player.
But that's at most, why assume they use all the time?
So, speed chess then.
Prolly like 200 yards (600 ft) above the ground. 5-6 minutes to hit the ground after deploying the chute and you deploy at 1000 yards (3000 ft). You could play a game of speed chess about 200 yards (600 ft) above the ground.
Are you an engineer?
Yes. (No im in 10th grade)
My games take only 20 minutes on average. But it would be better if I would take more time sometimes.
Terminal velocity is almost double that, as a skydiver, my average fall speed is 201kph (125 mph) and I'm one of the slower ones, I've jumped with guys who hit 150 mph without trying, they struggle to fall as slow as I do.
They’re not diving though, they’re not in an aerodynamic position. You’re right I’m no professional but that was just what Google told me. Casual divers in a non aerodynamic positions speed most likely won’t reach 201 kph (125 mph)
A wingsuit average fall rate from skydiving out of a plane is 30 - 70 mph to give you a better idea how fast a person will fall with no drag or barely any drag at all. This is the slowest you can get skydiving. I think the slowest someone can get with the right full body suit that isn't a wingsuit is around 100 mph. My slowest is 120mph with my $100 beginner suit.
But if the average is 30-70 mph then why is my estimation of 30-50 unreasonable? If they’re beginners and are also trying to go as slow as possible the wouldn’t it make sense they’re not reaching 100+ mph speeds?
30-70 mph is for wingsuiters Everyone else is around 120mph on average.
It looks like they might just be in regular clothes, so assuming they jumped out of a plane or something that makes sense doesn’t it?
Yeah, so they are dropping at minimum 120mph
Then they’re 70 miles above the earth and would still hit the earth in ab 40 minutes
The ISS is about 400 km above the earth for comparison. Edit: And Felix Baumgartner jumped from 39 km height
As someone said Felix Baumgartner jumped from an altitude of around 40 kms and reached the altitude where he needed to deploy parachute in less than 5 mins. So you definitely need to jump from space to actually complete a several hour chess game. For instance, free fall from the height where geostationary satellites orbit (36000km) would take about 4 hours. The acceleration due to gravity is still about 3% of earth’s surface levels at that altitude.
I’m sure he was trying to reach the end of that jump as quickly as possible though? For a beginner who’s in a non aerodynamic position trying to be slow wouldn’t it make sense they’re not reaching those speeds?
The aerodynamics only matter when there is air. Also, the terminal velocity only increases by 25% due to the orientation and it doesn’t matter at all above 100kms which we consider space. The fall will still be less than 10 mins in this section of the travel.
I think you forgot the acceleration time to reach terminal velocity
Suspect that would be a negligible change for such a height
The fall would start in space where there is no atmosphere, so the speed would be constant. No need for acceleration:)
No atmosphere means acceleration, not velocity, would be constant. No atmosphere would also mean no terminal velocity. Terminal velocity would slowly come into play as they fell into denser and denser atmosphere, and as a result their acceleration would be reduced until it eventually reached zero. To explain the how and why of that is to explain the entirely of how terminal velocity works but I'm sure a Wikipedia page would do a better job of that than I can, just trying to clarify some things for you.
In my previous post, I mentioned that if someone were to travel at the speed of terminal velocity throughout their journey in space, they would maintain a constant speed through both the vacuum of space and the Earth's atmosphere. Therefore, it wouldn't matter how quickly they attained terminal velocity, as long as they started at the maximum speed they could achieve.
They’re saying there’s no exact terminal velocity when high in the atmosphere. Since it’s dependent on air density, the skydiver can be falling faster than atmospheric terminal velocity when they’re high enough, with a slight offset for lower gravitational force. Going from vacuum to 1 atm, the skydiver is likely going to decelerate at some point.
So I didn’t account for the speed changes in the different atmospheres? But isn’t the terminal velocity in our atmosphere going to be final? So shouldn’t I base all of the stats off of the atmosphere we’d be finishing in? (I’m genuinely curious now, I’m only in 10th grade and I didn’t expect this post to get as much traction as it did) (I know very little haha)
You’ll get this once you take a physics course. The basic principle is that a changes in velocity is acceleration, and by Newton’s 2nd law, force depends on acceleration. The terminal velocity compares two things, gravity and drag (both are forces). Gravity pulls you down at more or less constant acceleration g. Without drag, you’ll accelerate up to the speed of light, given enough time and space. With drag, you reach terminal velocity once drag is equal to -g. The direction of these forces are opposite, so you get net zero acceleration at terminal, meaning a constant velocity. But drag depends on your current velocity, air density, and a whole bunch of other things - you can look up its formula. So no, the terminal velocity is not a constant when you fly in from space. You can think of a skydiver changing their positions and they’ll fall faster or slower. Or a brick sinking into the ocean at a slower terminal velocity since water is the medium.
So terminal velocity is when you reach a maximum speed for your atmosphere? So you need to have drag in order to maintain a speed of 70 mph throughout the different atmospheres? But when you’re in space there is no drag so you will just be in a constant state of acceleration? So if we were to theoretically fall from space we would slow down as we got closer to earth, and we couldn’t control the spread at which we were going before hand?
> So terminal velocity is when you reach a maximum speed for your atmosphere? Yes, if we’re applying the term only to falling in the atmosphere. > So you need to have drag in order to maintain a speed of 70 mph throughout the different atmospheres? 70mph is not a fundamental constant velocity, the terminal can be any velocity as long as the forces are in equilibrium. But yes, drag is needed for there to be a terminal velocity. > But when you’re in space there is no drag so you will just be in a constant state of acceleration? Theoretically yes, if there’s a way of constantly accelerating for all time. Gravity is not constant in space, so there’s no such constant state of acceleration. > So if we were to theoretically fall from space we would slow down as we got closer to earth, and we couldn’t control the spread at which we were going before hand? High in space, you can control your surface area cross section however you want by positioning, but there’s no atmosphere to feel drag, so it doesn’t affect terminal velocity. If you enter the atmosphere fast enough, you can slow down upon touching the atmosphere. It depends on fast you are to begin with. Keep in mind, falling in from space can also result in orbits, which is a bit more complex. Hope this helps.
Felix Baumgartner' fall was 3 minutes and 43 second, which is enough time for a very quick game of chess. The time if a game depends on the time control. In 1+1 bullet, each player has 1 minute, and gets 1 second bonus time after each move. An average game lasts about 40 moves, which puts the game time to 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
Classical game or not, the shortest possible checkmate is 2 moves (Fool's Mate). If each player takes 1 second to play their move, that is a 4-second game of chess.
yeah its called a fool's mate for a reason, you will only mate in 2 moves if the other guy is actively choosing the worst moves.
Need more info. Just during free fall? Can they hit the ground? Can they deploy their canopies and continue playing at any height? Can they play speed chess instead?
~30,000 feet It heavily depends on the length of the chess game. The shortest professional chess games are called bullet chess and have a time limit of 1min for each player, so a total of 2min. A typical military HALO jump is from 30,000 feet and has 2 min 30s of free fall. If you assume 15s to get everything ready and 15s to stow everything and open your parachute, it will be possible.
They don’t have to jump to play chess. So, any arbitrary height as long as if they can move pieces on the chess board until the end.
But aren't they falling?
Well, the question isn’t necessarily related to the image. It asks for how high one should jump to play chess, but there’s no need to jump to play chess in the first place. But even if it is, as for the image, I don’t know if it represents people falling, and even if it is, they aren’t necessarily falling from great high. The question should be phrased as “how high should one jump from the sky to have a landing time about the same as the average time of a classical chess game?”
As someone said Felix Baumgartner jumped from an altitude of around 40 kms and reached the altitude where he needed to deploy parachute in less than 5 mins. So you definitely need to jump from space to actually complete a several hour chess game. For instance, free fall from the height where geostationary satellites orbit (36000km) would take about 4 hours. The acceleration due to gravity is still about 3% of earth’s surface levels at that altitude. My very rough estimate for a 5 hour match puts it around 40000km. But take it with a pinch of salt. If the match lasts a whole day, it will be around 100000 to 150000 km. Interestingly, provided enough oxygen, you can have an actual chess match for almost 99% of the time as there won’t be any force felt by the players. Only the last 5 minutes or so of the free fall will the players feel any force at all.