277 sats \ 4 replies \ @petertodd 1 Mar \ on: Why are elevators so bad? tech
Nah, modern elevators are much faster than they used to be. The first elevator was was 12m/minute. The current record holder is now 20.5m/second, a 100x increase in speed.
Sure, typical elevators haven't increased that much. But there are very real physical limits to consider: if short elevators accelerated even faster, at some point they'd put unacceptable G-forces on the people inside them.
good points, i guess the motion of the elevator is constrained heavily by acceleration forces and building heights…
however, i still think the time it takes for an elevator to open its doors and close them on every floor it stops at (a bulk of the total trip time in a tall building) is way too slow.
surely we could use cameras to detect when people were at risk of getting doors closed on them (rather than the in-door lasers), and when the coast is clear the doors could quickly shut. i still find myself smashing the door close button every time i get in an elevator.
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You know how Star Trek always has those fast opening and closing doors?
I uses to know a guy who worked on props, and actually helped design and build those doors. He said they were terrifying, as there was simply no way to build them sufficiently light weight to not have the potential to seriously injure someone if they accidentally closed on you. It was bad enough that they had to carefully choreograph ever scene where someone walked through the doors, along with multiple independent people actually operating them to make sure one person screwing up wouldn't be enough to result in an injury.
Again, physics screws you over. A robust door is heavy, and that much mass moving that fast is enough momentum to seriously hurt you if the sensors ever fail.