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Jahrules

Possibly the 1-millionth Pantheon thread viewer.
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Feb 3, 2019
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Some discussions about marketing and theme park's general "record seeking" led me to wonder when a drop angle stops becoming a drop. Or does it?

For instance Takabisha has a 'drop angle' of 121 degrees.

A 'hypothetical max' angle might be 180 degrees (fully inverting and riding a short distance upside down before kicking out into a drop) - or maybe they could push it a bit further and go a few degrees more than 180, making a slight upside down uphill climb before swinging back around and down.

But my point is, the drop angle, to a certain degree, does not do a very good job at describing the ride experience.

But I also can't think of a better way to do it that would also make sense to the general public.
 
I woud argue that a drop would be any piece of track that moves downward on either straight or parabolically curved track. I would say then that the steepest drop would be 179.9 degrees. It would be the equivalent of having a .1 degree decline right side up. 180's equivalent would be 0, or flat track.
 
I woud argue that a drop would be any piece of track that moves downward on either straight or parabolically curved track. I would say then that the steepest drop would be 179.9 degrees. It would be the equivalent of having a .1 degree decline right side up. 180's equivalent would be 0, or flat track.

That was my initial thought too, but would a .1 degree decline really be considered a drop? Break runs probably have an even steeper grade.

The answer to this question is probably just 180 minus the minimum angle that one would consider to be a normal drop. So if we say the minimum angle of a normal drop is 30 degrees, the steepest possible drop would be 150 degrees.

I’d say anything far beyond this metric is just a glorified inversion.
 
That was my initial thought too, but would a .1 degree decline really be considered a drop?
It would still be considered a decline, but the real question is if a drop and a decline the same thing?
 
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What would you call a hypothetical drop that is shaped like this?

drop.png
 
It would still be considered a decline, but the real question is if a drop and a decline the same thing?

I think they’re different. For example, I’d argue coasters like Avalanche don’t have any drops, despite having a constant decline. Another example: the switchback portion of most Wild Mice(???) declines slightly, but I wouldn’t call that a drop.
 
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