#ICYMI: Planet NASCAR, with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Is Planet NASCAR governed by the same laws of physics as the rest of Planet Earth? You wouldn’t know it from some of the responses to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s tweets about the sport. Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice bring Neil into the studio to unpack the physics in his NASCAR tweets. Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on: Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360?mt=2 GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science TuneIn: http://www.tunein.com/playingwithscience NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch/listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:13Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:14Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is

• 0:14Chuck Nice?

  Playing with

• 0:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Science. Once again, we enter the Twitter sphere through the eyes and mind of Neil deGrasse Tyson, as he takes his laser pen and points it at the speeding planet of NASCAR. Yeah, you heard me, NASCAR.

• 0:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and did you ever wonder what your very own personal guide to the universe thinks about how Planet NASCAR increased its weight but not its mass? Well, stick around because when you play with fire, you get burned.

• 0:39Gary O'Reilly?

  When you play with science, you get learned. So ring the bell, school is back in, and our supply teacher for this class is none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  That's right, the man himself, Neil.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for having me, guys.

• 0:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a pleasure. Always happy to be on.

• 0:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, let's get started.

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Do you really mean that? Do you really mean that?

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm happy to... I'm a servant of the curiosity that you bring to your audience. I'm a servant of that.

• 1:07Chuck Nice?

  That... Oh, you don't care, that's a nice way.

• 1:08Gary O'Reilly?

  That's cool.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  That's a nice way of saying...

• 1:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, we like the way that...

• 1:10Chuck Nice?

  That was a very nice way of saying, "I am not here for you, I am here for your audience."

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that's true. That is exactly true. I don't give a rat's ass about your ass. It's your people out there.

• 1:22Gary O'Reilly?

  All about you, people.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 1:24Gary O'Reilly?

  As simple as that. Right, Chuck, let's read the first tweet.

• 1:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so this show is all about the tweets that you have put out on Twitter

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  about NASCAR.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a few years ago.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You all dug those up?

• 1:37Chuck Nice?

  We did some digging. Yeah, they don't go away, but just like, no... We did some digging. And the cool thing is that, what I love is, you know, whenever you tweet, it becomes a thing. You know, there's like, it's just awesome to see the conversation under the tweet.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52Chuck Nice?

  Where people are arguing back and forth about whatever it is that you said, and then there's the...

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They display their inner geek.

• 1:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The inner geek comes out and they fight about it.

• 2:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:01Chuck Nice?

  And then there's always one person who's just like, "Yeah, well, I got my degree in astrophysics from DeVry University, and Neil is wrong."

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, no.

• 2:11Chuck Nice?

  Like, that's...

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  So, hey, let's read our first tweet.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, can I put, give this in context?

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead, man.

• 2:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, cuz I'm interested. Context. Do we, do we want that to happen cuz he's only a guest?

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, just the context.

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you dug these tweets out, they would have been from 2014.

• 2:29Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? During the run, the weekly airings of Cosmos.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Sunday night in prime time on Fox.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. All right. Then we learned that of the 13-week run, one of those nights was gonna get bumped.

• 2:49Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For NASCAR.

• 2:51Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, "What? You're gonna put NASCAR in for Cosmos? Excuse me?"

• 2:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Did you use those exact words?

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 2:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Or did you?

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But... So, so I said, "All right, I am going to fight fire with fire." Okay? And I said, "For all those who wanted to see Cosmos, but now are watching NASCAR, I'm gonna tweet the physics of NASCAR."

• 3:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this way, I'm respecting.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Memorial Day weekend, you gotta do the NASCAR thing.

• 3:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Sunday night, family, everybody's home. NASCAR's a huge following.

• 3:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm gonna be pumping this stuff with some physics. And that's what I did.

• 3:28Chuck Nice?

  I don't know why they just didn't have you on Cosmos, but put a bunch of, like, branding stickers all over you. And just let you do Cosmos, like, Penzoil here, and, you know.

• 3:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Let it run around the track.

• 3:40Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 3:42Gary O'Reilly?

  And overalls with a whole load of branding.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that would be a, the collision of NASCAR and the astrophysics.

• 3:48Chuck Nice?

  That's very cool.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Chuck Nice?

  All right, so, uh, if we can bring up our first tweet, we'll see, uh, what it says.

• 3:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Fabulous.

• 3:56Chuck Nice?

  Rubber tires on asphalt grant a maximum speed of about 165 miles per hour in the 24-degree bank turns at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

• 4:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, for me, the interesting part in there is the 24-degree banking.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Now... Is there a difference or is that a standard for a NASCAR track?

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I I I can't speak as an expert of NASCAR, but what I can tell you is I in order to do that calculation, you have to know the the angle of the bank.

• 4:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it turns out within some tracks, the banks are not the same.

• 4:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The bank angle is not the same on different turns and it's not the same from track to track. So that's all I can say. I don't know what rules or what what what what what regulations are there. But all I can say is at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the angle of the track is 24 degrees.

• 4:46Gary O'Reilly?

  How do I use that? So as a as a race driver?

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:49Gary O'Reilly?

  How am I going to use that banking to my advantage over my opponent at, say, 160?

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it all depends on how, what is the what is the coefficient?

• 5:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of friction between your tires and the road. Let's start at zero. Let's start at zero degrees.

• 5:05Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm with you.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's a track that has no bank at all.

• 5:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you can imagine that, sure.

• 5:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no bank.

• 5:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Just a normal.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If there was no friction between your tires and the road and you try to go into a turn, you just keep going straight.

• 5:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not going to turn.

• 5:20Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're not you're not connected to the road. So you're in a straight line and you will continue in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force. One of Newton's laws of motion. Okay, so now watch what happens. Holding aside a coefficient of friction.

• 5:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you bank the track, what will happen is the track now turns you.

• 5:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the track can actually engage a turn even with no coefficient of friction at all.

• 5:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's that's cool. Okay?

• 5:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so now put in friction.

• 5:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now you've got grip, you've got a so you can just take that turn, just just. Feel that turn and you know it and you feel it so there is one speed. One speed that will maximize. How fast you can go. Depending on the friction between your tires and the road and the angle and. Sorry, the radius of curvature. All right. Cause if it's banked, but it's like really. Really wide, right, that's not good. It's not a thing, so it's it's. If it's, so you have to measure the radius of curvature, that's why I had to specify the bank turns at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Right. That's not a general statement about speed and the bank. So how tight is the turn? That so there's one speed and it's 165 miles an hour.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Add a coefficient of friction of one. Generally asphalt and rubber comes in about a coefficient of friction of one. Okay, that's really good. That's why tires work very well on roads. That's why. It's not an accident. Right. Okay. So what forces are we. They're gripping. They're basically. They're basically. Yes. They call them toothy. Yes, now, now, now. You can increase the coefficient of friction above one. If the tire is kind of gummy. Okay, if the tire is gummy. The composition of the tire. Then it's it's actually grabbing the ground, you can get the coefficient of friction slightly above one. Now, here's why that matters. Ready? Okay. Okay.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are we sitting comfortably? Please tell. If you're gonna accelerate. Something. And you say zero to 60 in, this is America, so we're miles per hour here, okay? I'm cool with that, so, yeah, yeah. Not zero to 100 kilometers per hour, no, it's America, Jack. As a Brit, miles. Oh, you're, that's right, because they invented miles. Yeah, yeah. They go way backward, miles. They want to drop that invention thing on you, but yeah. All right, so, so here's what you have to ask the question, what is the fastest you can accelerate? From zero to 60, that's a very sensible question. It is not infinite, it's just not, okay? And it depends on your coefficient of friction.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At a coefficient of friction of one, where tires gripping, it's not a gummy tire, it's just a regular. Sure. Coefficient, right? The fastest you can accelerate. Is. The acceleration of gravity itself. Oh, which is fixed. Which is fixed. Exactly. That is the fastest you can accelerate. Wow. And so, in other words, if you drop a ball, you look at how quickly it gains speed. And then you have a car with a really powerful engine that wants to accelerate faster, well, it goes this way, so they'll like go exactly the same speed. Okay, this is an interesting fact. Yeah. About coefficient of friction. Yeah. And acceleration. Excuse me, you can accelerate faster if it has a rocket coming out the back. Right.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then it's the ground is irrelevant. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah. It's just pushing it regardless. You've taken away the element of. You take away the tire road. No, it's just being pushed, it's not accelerating from the top. Or, or if it is on a, on a, on a, uh, a track, where you have intersecting teeth on a gear. Yeah. Then you can just rotate that as fast as you want. Right.

• 9:18Gary O'Reilly?

  So what happens if you've got tires that are too soft? Engage too much? Do you not then impede the speed that you?

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, if you have really gummy tires. Yeah. In fact, they warm up the tires. Yeah. And this adds to the grip and everything. And if you look at the tires of dragsters, okay? That you get those, oh my gosh, it's like, you know, I'm gonna get my hand off. It's like chewing gum. And it's why they call them slicks. Right. It's full surface contact with the ground. There's no treads in there. Cause they don't drag race in the rain.

• 9:47Gary O'Reilly?

  No, exactly. For some reason.

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want maximum. All their tires are bald. They're bald, they're basically bald. So another thing is to help out, if you have all your jet exhaust, pointing backwards, that gives you a little, I don't know how much, but it's, you might as well have the jet exhaust pointing backwards instead of forwards. Right. Cause then you're going against your own. Using everything.

• 10:07Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's everything you can.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything you can get. Yeah. But sometimes that matters, you know, in races where a fraction of a second comes in. So, so all I'm saying is, you can calculate this. So I did that calculation for Charlotte Motor Speedway. It was a hundred and sixty-five miles an hour. Then you watch them in the race. There they are hitting above two hundred in the straightaways. Then they go to the turn. And at the peak turn, they're 165 miles an hour every time. You have to watch, they have that little arrow that follows. That follows the car around and it gives you data on the thing. And so what happened was when I tweeted that, people said, no, these are special cars and they, you know, what do you know? You're just a physicist, as though somehow physics has nothing to do with this was the implication. But of course, at the peak turn, that's where that speed matters.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have to slow down. By the way, if you go faster than that, you're not going to stay connected to the road and you hit the embankment.

• 11:01Gary O'Reilly?

  You're flying.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you look at the embankment, there's a lot of bumps on the edge of the embankment.

• 11:05Gary O'Reilly?

  So that's driver, that's driver intelligence, that's driver knowledge of each particular track.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they'll have to know, I presume they would, someone would tell them this.

• 11:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh gosh, yeah. There's a whole team of analytics.

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  Like the guy who did 175 miles per hour. I'm sure he told them maximum speed of 165. Because, right, because as his car was flung off the bank and out of the arena.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, of course, you can do 100, 200, 190, 180 going into it.

• 11:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're slowing down. At that point, you just don't want that to happen. And who was it? Was it Mario Andretti? Who said, if you're in complete control of your car, you're not in the race.

• 11:44Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I've heard this, like, so, so they might be trying 166, 160. You, you, you're testing those limits of physics.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise, you're not, you're not in the race. You don't want to do it safe.

• 11:56Gary O'Reilly?

  They have to drive on the edge. They have to drive in the red zone all the time.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. If, if I believe, if I believe, I mean, why wouldn't I believe it? You look, you see what these guys are doing out there.

• 12:07Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, Chuck, let's get to another tweet. We're going to stick with the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

• 12:11Chuck Nice?

  Which clearly you were watching this when you were tweeting. That the Charlotte Motor Speedway increased their banking angle from 24 degrees to 31 degrees. The earth as we know it would stop its rotation. No, no, that didn't say that. I didn't say that. It didn't say that. It says, if they increased their banking angle from 24 to 31 degrees, the cars could do the turn at 200 miles. per hour.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 12:38Chuck Nice?

  So this must be what you were talking about, the bank is turning the car itself.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 12:44Chuck Nice?

  So the deeper the bank, the higher the speed can be because you're getting the force that's pressing the car.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's more of a force to to to to to enable that turn.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not just the sliding of tires against roads sideways that's trying to prevent you from sliding. Okay, that would then enable the turn. It's the the bank is is empowering your car to go at a higher speed in order to make that turn.

• 13:09Gary O'Reilly?

  See, that would be interesting from a racing point of view because it means I could hit the straightaway at two hundred and not lose energy through braking coming into the bend.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only that, not only that, if you drive at the exact speed that the bank was calculated for. You'd never have to turn your steering wheel.

• 13:28Chuck Nice?

  Because the car thinks it's going. The car thinks it's going straight.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The car thinks it's going in a straight line.

• 13:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The car does not.

• 13:34Chuck Nice?

  So you just you just surf it.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but so what's interesting to me is if you know this about the turns, the only steering you're doing is to maneuver in front and behind cars to position yourself.

• 13:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a whole other jockeying of what's going on among the cars and it's not, I gotta turn left. And that was the joke in Charlotte, the town, all right, they say in Charlotte, only people only know how to turn left.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the joke.

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because all the tracks go clockwise or counterclockwise around. And I'm saying if they're hitting the turns at the exact speed, they're not even turning the wheel to do that.

• 14:09Gary O'Reilly?

  How brave is the driver that goes into the turn and goes, nah, I'll let the car take.

• 14:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Not a chance. So how much of a change in angle on the banking could we get away with and what sort of speeds could we play with?

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I I I my general question would be, uh, you want more action, you want more speeds, why not just increase the angle? But here's the problem, if you're not doing two hundred miles an hour. The car is gonna wanna slide down.

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  You don't have enough force pinning it against the.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so if something goes down going into the turn and you don't keep up that speed. You're, yeah, the car is not stable.

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the bank.

• 14:52Chuck Nice?

  And this this is for NASCAR because we're about to revolutionize them with this physics.

• 14:59Chuck Nice?

  Not discovery, but point. Is it possible to get to a speed where you not only can go up, but total Hot Wheels corkscrew? Because then, I'm a NASCAR fan. Now I'm a NASCAR fan, okay? It's like, you go into the turn, you're up on the bank, and then all of a sudden, corkscrew through and you come out the other side.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the answer is yes.

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, in fact, they do it in amusement parks.

• 15:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah, that's right. Most roller coasters do that.

• 15:30Gary O'Reilly?

  And the wall of death? The vertical wall where the cyclist goes around.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, so for example, so it's just, you have to be, if you travel fast, so in other words, let me restate your comment. If you travel fast enough, then you can, so now you're going up, all right, because if you go corkscrew, you have to go up.

• 15:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you travel fast enough, you can give yourself enough upward momentum so that your car continues to press against a surface that is pointing downwards.

• 15:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and then you come down off of that and do it another time. Yeah, in principle, you can design a racetrack where cars do corkscrews. But, but you have to be careful because you don't want the car to like stall before you go into it.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you fall out.

• 16:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's amazing! Oh, my God, you're making me such a NASCAR fan right now. Corkscrews and cars falling from the sky.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, if you don't hit the speed.

• 16:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all about the speed that you gotta hit. And so, yeah, that's a whole other danger factor.

• 16:26Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It ain't even about the crash. Is your car gonna fall out of the sky?

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  It will fall out of the sky.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 16:31Chuck Nice?

  See, this is why I don't watch NASCAR, because I grew up on Speed Racer. And those, you remember Speed Racer? And here comes Speed Racer, he's a demon on wheels. He's down, down, and travel like he's never, ever gonna come back, okay?

• 16:46Gary O'Reilly?

  This is real, right? I haven't dreamt this, that you two are serious to each other.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The power of pop culture on childhood.

• 16:53Chuck Nice?

  On childhood, it's childhood pop culture.

• 16:55Gary O'Reilly?

  I need to lie down, and this means we're gonna take a break. Please stick with us. We'll try and find out what top speeds NASCAR get to and what we think can happen if, if, if, if we can get close to 300 miles an hour, what kind of banking we'll get then. So if you want to find out, stick around. This is Playing with Science, and we'll be back very, very shortly.

• 17:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back, I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 17:21Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science. Yes, it is. And we are delving into the tweets of Neil deGrasse Tyson regarding NASCAR. If you missed the first section, don't worry, we've got plenty more. But go back and have a good listen, because we discuss an awful lot of science in the sport of NASCAR. So let's get into our next tweet, Chuck.

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Wait a minute, are you a fan of NASCAR? Have you ever followed NASCAR?

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've attended, I've visited, I've been at one NASCAR race in my life.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah?

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never understood why there was so much more interest in NASCAR relative to Formula One, at least in the United States. I just didn't understand that, that they had better marketing. Because, you know, the Formula One cars are pretty cool looking.

• 18:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  They're like rockets with wheels.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  And the fact that they're so low to the ground.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're like, yeah, yeah.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  And they're this far off the ground.

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. So I never understood the difference in appeal. But I like high-performance people, I like high-performance machines, just as a general thing.

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  I'll tell you why Formula One is not as popular here in America as NASCAR. Because Formula One racers speak like this. And NASCAR drivers talk like this, dammit! That's America!

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mark it!

• 18:37Chuck Nice?

  Mark! Okay.

• 18:39Gary O'Reilly?

  As the only, as the token European, I feel I should stand up, but I just think I'm gonna get knocked back down again.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not against you.

• 18:47Gary O'Reilly?

  No, I know it's not against me, but anyway, it's interesting. One's an oval, and you couldn't put a NASCAR race in Monte Carlo, but you can with a Formula One, which is so, so special.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 18:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Anyway, next tweet, let's go there.

• 19:00Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know what it is, they need Formula Two. That's what it is. They've been Formula One for so long.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  Formula Two?

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's time for Formula Two.

• 19:07Gary O'Reilly?

  There are, there are formulas, there are other formulas coming down, plus there's an E-Formula.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, I heard about that.

• 19:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah, that's soup.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Electric, electric cars.

• 19:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. And they race, they are rapid, proper, seriously rapid. But, next tweet, let's go.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Spoilers increase the effective weight traction over a car's rear wheels at high speed without increasing the car's mass.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's start out for a second. Have you noticed, either in cars you've driven, or observing a police car, that if you have a heavy trunk... You actually, your car is more stable on the road. Have you ever, I don't know if you've ever noticed this.

• 19:47Chuck Nice?

  I transport a lot of bodies in my.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that you should know.

• 19:50Chuck Nice?

  So I'm very well aware.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you would know. And police cars can also be weighted towards the, what, sorry. Back in the day when you had rear wheel traction.

• 19:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you would, if you have higher weight over those wheels, then in occasions where you might have spun out.

• 20:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't.

• 20:08Chuck Nice?

  You don't.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And anytime your car is spinning, then you don't have full traction with the ground and you're not in complete control of your car.

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  It's like sledding.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't, I'm, I don't sled.

• 20:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, drifting.

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  You don't sled? Dude, I'm telling you right now, this winter, me, you, Central Park, Giant Hill, we're taking it on, baby. Uh, but no, here's the deal, in sledding, you need a fat kid on your sled team.

• 20:34Chuck Nice?

  If you don't have a fat kid on your sled team, forget it.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't, you're just, it gives you more traction.

• 20:39Chuck Nice?

  Right, you need, that's just what you were saying.

• 20:41Gary O'Reilly?

  You didn't get that email about political correctness.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know this about, okay, okay.

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  So go ahead.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so the point is, if you're spinning, increase the weight. And then the contact with the ground becomes, the integrity gets restored and your traction is.

• 21:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Trouble is, by putting, by putting a whole load of bricks in the back of your NASCAR, you're gonna lose everything because it's weight, but this is downforce without.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So exactly, so your weight is whatever a scale will show. Okay, so.

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Let's not talk about that. I've been eating donuts lately, I'm just saying, Mexican, a lot of Mexican. Let's not talk about the scales.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could, you could put bricks in the trunk of every NASCAR to increase that traction.

• 21:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could do that. But then, the engine now has, the motor, has to accelerate more weight. And Newton's second law of motion, the force equals the mass times acceleration. If the mass goes up, then you're getting a lower acceleration from the force. You're not gonna go as fast, okay? Or you're not gonna be as nimble. So. Is there any way to increase the weight on the back wheels? Or the weight of the car without increasing the mass of the car?

• 22:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, there is.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there is.

• 22:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's what the spoiler does.

• 22:06Gary O'Reilly?

  That's what the spoiler.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as you're driving, air comes across the spoiler, presses down, increases the weight of the car without increasing the mass of the car. And this greatly improves your traction, especially at high speeds.

• 22:19Gary O'Reilly?

  So you said about the Formula One race cars being super sexy.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 22:22Gary O'Reilly?

  If you look at the curvature from the side, the profile of the car, it it comes up over the the front wheel, comes down, and then up over the back. So what it's doing is dragging the airflow. And you're gonna tell me exactly what the physics is. It's making that airflow over the rear wheels, push that weight down. Therefore, you don't increase the mass of the vehicle, but you are increasing the downforce, is that right?

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so I I don't know if the shape of the vehicle so much as the spoiler itself.

• 22:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sole job is this. Um, there are other factors in the shape of the vessel regarding the the um, the aerodynamics. What you don't want is to have turbulence in the back of your car, which then creates a drag, a suction. It's kind of a backwards drag. And you're going, this is why, this is why drafting works, okay?

• 23:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have a car that would have turbulence in the back. You come up behind it, okay? Now, it works in two ways. One, the car that's leading moves faster because it doesn't have the drag behind it. So people say, stop drafting off of me, I'm towing you. You're not actually towing the car.

• 23:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, you want the person there.

• 23:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you actually want to be the second car rather than the first car. But if you are the first car, it's better to have someone drafting than not. That's all I'm saying.

• 23:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Because you're, that that drafter is eliminating their drag.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The drafter is eliminating the new car.

• 23:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Correct.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. So now the air comes back and you have someone else directing that and someone else directing that. And now, now you, you are sucked in behind it. So this, this affects fuel efficiency too.

• 23:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? I did this experiment once. So, you know, when, when I first got a car that tracked what your instantaneous.

• 24:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah, your fuel consumption.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your fuel consumption. You know, miles per gallon.

• 24:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you notice if you take your foot off the pedal, the miles per gallon goes up because you're moving, but you're not.

• 24:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Not sucking gas.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not sucking gas, okay. So I just, you know, do my own physics experiments on the road. Uh, this is my, my, my first outing in a car that did this.

• 24:22Gary O'Reilly?

  You know, you might have a problem.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so watch, so watch, so I do this and I say, so I wonder what'll happen if I get behind this truck. So I'm driving, I'm getting like 25 miles a gallon. And then I slide in behind the truck and my foot is still on the accelerator, okay? And whoa, it was like 80 miles a gallon. I was behind the truck.

• 24:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Cause you're drafting the truck.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm drafting the truck and it was like, whoa.

• 24:45Chuck Nice?

  And Neil drove all the way to Florida and he was only going to the store for some bread.

• 24:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Remember the show we did with Lance Armstrong?

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can do this experiment, that's a, that's a fascinating experiment.

• 24:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Remember the show?

• 24:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With Lance?

• 24:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, Lance and you got into this.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:01Gary O'Reilly?

  How you advocated following trucks down the freeway.

• 25:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 25:04Gary O'Reilly?

  And I said there and then, there's under no circumstances are you allowed to drive me anywhere on a long distance.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just, I mean, but for the sake of the experiment, for sure you would agree.

• 25:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Of course, of course.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 25:14Chuck Nice?

  I follow trucks too, but only because they're sexy.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So anyhow.

• 25:21Gary O'Reilly?

  We'll leave you with that.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, so the shape of the vehi- vehicle is more related to its aerodynamics.

• 25:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that you don't have drag rather than the downward force that is you're otherwise getting from the spoiler.

• 25:33Gary O'Reilly?

  If you're the car in front, can you create dirty air for the driver behind you that really plays with?

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's really just the shape of your car.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's all. And in NASCAR, all the shapes are the same.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all been neutralized, basically.

• 25:46Chuck Nice?

  So in NASCAR, is drafting like a strategy, like it isn't a Tour de France?

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would say it wouldn't be.

• 25:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see the sort of daisy chain of cars in races as they go around and around and around. And all of a sudden, they pull that slingshot.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 26:00Gary O'Reilly?

  So what's going on when they pull that slingshot maneuver and use the energy to achieve that overtake?

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't know the strategies of what's going on in the mind of the folks who are making these maneuvers. It's always odd to me that if you're third, when and how and why are you going to then take second and then take first? You know, what are the strategies and how does that work? I can't tell you.

• 26:20Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry, the Twitterverse will tell us. Yeah. As soon as this podcast is out, right now, there are people feverishly typing to tell us exactly how that happened.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, or how, when you would judge to do that, is my point.

• 26:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, please.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if the cars are, to the extent that the cars are the same, you are then judging who's the better driver.

• 26:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it's not about the physics, it's about who's the better driver, that's all. So, but my conversation ends where the physics ends, and then the driver strategies begin.

• 26:49Gary O'Reilly?

  In the end of the first bit, I said we'll get into the sort of speed. So if we got NASCARs hitting 300 miles an hour, say, in the future, what sort of...

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd have to design the tracks differently.

• 27:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, what sort of angle? We talked about 24 and 31 degrees. What sort of angles would you anticipate the banking being and what could we say?

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's a very straight calculation. So if you have straightaways long enough to sustain 300 miles an hour, and you don't want to slow down on the bank, um, I'd have to do the calculation, but a 40-degree bank, 45-degree, 50-degree bank. Now, have you ever walked on the banked surface at NASCAR? Have you ever done that?

• 27:27Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You basically can't. You're like...

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the slope is higher, it's higher than any hill you have ever walked up. Okay, so it's already bank steeply. It's already steep. Just next time something happens on the track in the bank section, watch the guys go up to try, if there's an accident or something, watch the guys trying to, it's like walking on a roof. Okay?

• 27:52Gary O'Reilly?

  A mountainous.

• 27:52Chuck Nice?

  A pitched roof, right?

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, pitched roof. You can't, it's, right, right, it's hard.

• 27:56Chuck Nice?

  It's right, you can do it, it's just.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can do it hard, yeah, yeah. And if you go to the NASCAR museum in Charlotte, you, they have a car parked on the slope of the track and it's like, did they just lift this up for me to see? Is that why this is, no, that's the slope of the track.

• 28:10Chuck Nice?

  That's right, they're trying to show you exactly what.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly how that goes down.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  I, I just wanna see your, your bank track walk again because that was.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 28:21Chuck Nice?

  So for those of you who are, for those of you who are listening, you missed a super cool, it, it, uh, Neil's bank track walk looks like a cross between Fred Sanford having a heart attack and somebody doing the poopy walk to the bathroom. It was awesome.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to agree.

• 28:42Gary O'Reilly?

  We need to talk. We need to talk.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So anyway, so the value of the spoiler is you have, you have, you have better traction there. And, and what's interesting, there's some models of Porsche, you know, commercial Porsches, where there's a spoiler that comes up only above a certain speed.

• 28:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, oh, that's standard on a number of.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A number of, so what's funny to me is, if you're gonna, if you, if you don't, if you left your radar gun at home and you're a cop, and a Porsche goes by and a spoiler is up, just write him a damn ticket.

• 29:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know what's funny is, uh, uh, I, I would see that, the Porsche, and I thought the guy was just showing off for me. Like, you know, like, but really what he was doing was like, eat my dust. But you get to a certain point and that spoiler comes up.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and you know it, and by the way, spoiler is not so useful at low speeds, right, because the, the force, the downward force is not significant. But at high speeds, it's really significant.

• 29:34Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's not driver controlled, it's just, the car does it because the car knows it needs to do that because it's, it's triggered off at a certain speed. That's really cool.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, if, if, and the spoilers of, oh, I haven't seen them lately, but they had like the cross section of an airplane wing.

• 29:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but upside down.

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that the force pushes down instead of up, right? But if you happen to have that at the wrong angle, and you reduce the pressure on your wheels.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All hell goes breaks loose. I mean, you can't, then you're not in control of the car.

• 30:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the car tumbles and flips. Yeah, you can flip the car.

• 30:07Chuck Nice?

  Look at you, just constantly finding ways to make NASCAR better.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we gotta get to 300 miles an hour somehow.

• 30:15Chuck Nice?

  Right. So what is the top speed? Do you guys?

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  I don't know what the top speed of NASCAR is.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are they limited? Is it limited?

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  I, you know, I'm sure it is.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why'd you bring a NASCAR expert here? I just know physics.

• 30:26Gary O'Reilly?

  No, we're just interested in your tweets and this is what's...

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:30Gary O'Reilly?

  There will be experts out there listening to this show who will feed back into us, and please do.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:34Gary O'Reilly?

  But there are cars being developed now that are gonna top, are topping out at 300 miles an hour.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:39Gary O'Reilly?

  And I can't believe for one second the good people who build the NASCARs won't have that kind of technology, that ability, particularly electric hybrid engines that are gonna just tear through 300 miles an hour. So like you said, the straightaways are gonna have to be longer.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Tracks are gonna have to be different.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you want a high-speed turn, it's gotta be a higher, a more significant...

• 31:02Gary O'Reilly?

  And if you're a designer of NASCAR tracks and you're listening, please build in a corkscrew, just for my friend here.

• 31:09Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 31:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 31:10Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 31:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Guaranteed an extra, extra viewer. Right. We're gonna take our next break. I hope you've enjoyed so far, because we've got plenty more NASCAR thoughts from Neil when we get back. Stay tuned.

• 31:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 31:27Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science, a NASCAR special for you, brought to you by the tweets of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck, let's get stuck straight in.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  That was a, thank you. That was my NASCAR. Thank you.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, can I tell you why that is an inaccurate?

• 31:43Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I tell you why?

• 31:44Chuck Nice?

  But I just did.

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I've only been for one...

• 31:46Chuck Nice?

  Come on now, Neil. Now let me tell you something.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no.

• 31:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Sit there, sit still and take your medicine.

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  It is such a rare occasion that I would ever disagree with you, only because it never works. So, I'm trying to figure out how this is not NASCAR.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll tell you why.

• 32:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's for an obscure reason. Okay? So, so...

• 32:06Gary O'Reilly?

  We love an obscure reason.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I I I'm not speaking for all tracks. I've been to one NASCAR race. It was at Daytona, okay? And so one of my great disappointments was they had speakers at every sort of interval of the track of the sound of the race going into the audience.

• 32:26Chuck Nice?

  Are you telling me that it's not true Doppler?

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's my point. So so so all you hear is

• 32:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  because wherever they are, that's the sound of the race. And I so wanted to be full up Doppler Doppler gangsta, right? Where the cars are right.

• 32:49Gary O'Reilly?

  See, you know why?

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because That's the Doppler effect. And I I wanted the Doppler effect and he didn't give me the Doppler effect.

• 32:57Gary O'Reilly?

  If you're listening, the good people of NASCAR, please, please, please, because I hate to see him like this. Hate to see him so affected by his lack of Doppler.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's the sound, a car in motion, whether or not it's in motion, anything that makes a sound emanates sound waves in all directions, moving at the speed of sound. And so you can you can look at the frequency of that sound and there's a there's a wavelength associated with it. All right. And so there it is coming this way, that way, that way. If the car now moves, it makes a sound when it's over here, but the next time it makes a wave, it's further in this direction. So the next wave is now closer in in separation in the front than it is in the back. Because the next wave is pushing in this direction.

• 33:42Gary O'Reilly?

  So you're pushing the waves in the front and leaving, stretching the waves.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stretching the waves in the back. And so the waves in the front change frequency. It's a higher pitch and the waves behind are a lower pitch. So Christian Doppler first discovered this, a German physicist, and he did it with

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  train whistles, okay? So the train comes towards you. He noticed it had a higher pitch than when it's just in front of you and then when it was passing, moving away from you. So that's why you go, so it's high pitched.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we associate that with so so

• 34:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Which number car was that?

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watch, watch, watch. So so we know that sound.

• 34:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We fully understand, we know that sound, but have you ever thought about it? It doesn't go

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not what it does.

• 34:33Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you have to be curious enough, as Doppler was, to think about this. And he wrote a formula, it's called the Doppler effect. And it applies to cars and

• 34:45Chuck Nice?

  Train whistles.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Train whistles and for, and in the universe, we get like the speeds of things.

• 34:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, by looking at how light, how the frequency of light has shifted.

• 34:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In our galaxy. So anyhow, that's why, uh, it, now maybe other tracks don't have speakers all around. Then you would hear their, no.

• 35:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But otherwise.

• 35:03Gary O'Reilly?

  And please tweet us, uh, for your favorite, uh, Neil deGrasse Tyson impersonation.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the Doppler effect.

• 35:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Just put a wish list together of what you would like Neil or Chuck to impersonate, and we'll do our best.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What would be weird if it went?

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be the, the Dop, the time reversed Doppler effect.

• 35:21Chuck Nice?

  That's a Doppler orgasm.

• 35:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Why? No. Why? No.

• 35:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what's next?

• 35:32Gary O'Reilly?

  I don't know.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 35:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Completely confused me.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's do another one.

• 35:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Do another one, do another, uh, do another tweet. While I come to terms with that, my head hurts.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  Now that NASA isn't launching space shuttles, would it be cool if at NASCAR allowed drivers to attach unused solid rocket boosters?

• 35:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Come on.

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Why not? I mean, if, if you have all these other sponsoring agents, the army, you know, the navy, they're, they're, they're, and I'm thinking, why don't we have NASA sponsor a car?

• 36:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then it would kind of have to win every race.

• 36:08Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? So how would you make sure of that? So you slip in some solid rocket boosters, I think, and wait, then maybe no one can notice and

• 36:16Gary O'Reilly?

  No one will notice this big Saturn five. There's a big Saturn V on wheels, sat, start line, and no one's, no, no, no, you're not seeing that really.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then it's a rocket, it's a rocket race rather than a road race. That's the problem.

• 36:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I still like it. And, and by the way, I'm, I'm, I think there needs to be more cheating in NASCAR, so.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doping at NASCAR.

• 36:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm all for NASCAR doping, man. All the guys, all the cars are exactly the same.

• 36:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Engine doping.

• 36:43Chuck Nice?

  You know, I understand that that is what creates a, you know, for our lack of a better term, perfect competition.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 36:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay?

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Driver against driver.

• 36:53Chuck Nice?

  Driver against driver. All the machines are the same, but...

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, to the same weight, too. Right, right?

• 36:59Chuck Nice?

  Right, but the thing is, like, even in cycling, or even in cafe racing, you can make modifications to the bike. Uh, the motorcycles, where they...

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cafe?

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Cafe racers, yeah.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what that's called?

• 37:11Chuck Nice?

  Uh...

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what the motorcycle...

• 37:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, where they pull the bike down.

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they got a kneecap, a knee thing, stop touching the ground.

• 37:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Speedway, that's Speedway, yeah.

• 37:18Chuck Nice?

  But, um, the cafe racers are the one with the little round front, the older ones back in the day.

• 37:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, by the way, the motorcycles that lean like that?

• 37:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The reason why they're leaning is because the track is not banked high enough.

• 37:30Chuck Nice?

  Right, they're actually pulling the bike down.

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, okay, so if they banked the track?

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They wouldn't have to lean so much.

• 37:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 37:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but then it wouldn't be as cool.

• 37:39Gary O'Reilly?

  On a MotoGP track, if they banked it, when you see those guys flying...

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's not as fun to watch, right, right, it wouldn't be as fun to watch. So if you banked it so that it was perpendicular to the angle that they are wanting to achieve anyway?

• 37:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then they're just driving a straight line.

• 37:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, let me tell you, now that's fun.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you wouldn't need the knee guards.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, you need them. I used to, I used to ride, and that's, that's the best part of riding a motorcycle.

• 38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You used to have a pretty face before that happened.

• 38:07Gary O'Reilly?

  End of a beautiful friendship. That's that friendship of a...

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  Actually, that was good. I liked it. I appreciated it there. Um, all right, so, solid rocket boosters for NASCAR, I'm all about it. Okay, let's move on. At 200 miles per hour...

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry.

• 38:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes?

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One last thing about the solid rocket boosters you might not have known.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, do you remember the space shuttle when it launched? It had two solid rocket boosters, one on the left and one on the right. And then a big old orange tank in the middle.

• 38:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the orange tank has liquid fuel. You can throttle that, you can stop it, you can make it more or less. And that fuel comes out of that tank through the shuttle and comes out the nozzles out of the back.

• 38:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The solid rocket boosters are standalone things. When you ignite a solid rocket booster, they do not shut off until there's no fuel left. Until it's empty. Okay, so, when they begin the main engine...

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They do that a few seconds before, is everything good? Oh, it's not good, cut it off.

• 39:08Chuck Nice?

  Right, because the solid rocket boosters.

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but the moment they hit the solid rocket boosters,

• 39:13Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is going to orbit, okay?

• 39:17Chuck Nice?

  That's great!

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Almost orbit. So what happens is, once they ignite, it is not coming back

• 39:22Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to Cape Canaveral.

• 39:24Chuck Nice?

  So it's like...

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what, so those puppies have to like run their course, and then it lands in Spain.

• 39:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is what happens. That's the, so they have these landing points.

• 39:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Good luck with steering one of those rocket NASCARs.

• 39:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so once you ignite a solid rocket booster, it's

• 39:37Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's over.

• 39:38Chuck Nice?

  It's a done deal.

• 39:39Gary O'Reilly?

  That's a, that's, oh, Chuck, that's a wild ride.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a wild ride.

• 39:42Chuck Nice?

  I love it. Uh, Houston, we left the door open. Sorry, sorry, solid rocket boosters are in effect, babe.

• 39:51Gary O'Reilly?

  So the one thing you could do on a NASCAR with a solid rocket is save on braking.

• 39:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because you can't do it.

• 39:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't brake, there's no braking.

• 39:59Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 40:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, if you tried to brake it, then, you know, put on brakes, you would just melt

• 40:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the tires into the road.

• 40:06Chuck Nice?

  I'm telling you guys-

• 40:07Gary O'Reilly?

  You're already weight saving, love it.

• 40:08Chuck Nice?

  I am telling you guys right now, between the two of you, you have vastly improved the sport of NASCAR, okay?

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With all these ideas.

• 40:16Chuck Nice?

  With all these ideas, okay? Corkscrew tracks, uh, no brakes.

• 40:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, high bank, high bank turns.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  High bank turn, um, let me tell you something, no brake NASCAR, I'm watching that.

• 40:28Gary O'Reilly?

  I wonder why?

• 40:29Chuck Nice?

  I'm watching that! Fox presents, no brake NASCAR. You want to talk about the highest ratings ever? You put thirty cars on a track with no brakes? That is amazing!

• 40:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Copyrighted playing with science.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. No brakes NASCAR.

• 40:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, let's do our next tweet.

• 40:47Chuck Nice?

  There you go, no brakes NASCAR, baby, it's coming your way.

• 40:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  Alright, let's move on to our next one. At two hundred miles per hour, a nice NASCAR speed, it'd take twelve hundred hours or fifty days to drive to the moon, and drivers would never need to turn left.

• 41:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh, you're in a mischievous mood when you're like that.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just to be clear, if you're gonna drive to the moon,

• 41:10Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you don't aim for the moon.

• 41:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you have to do is aim for where the moon will be when you get there.

• 41:19Chuck Nice?

  Right. That makes sense because the moon is moving.

• 41:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moon is moving and this is a 50 day drive. So that's one and two thirds of a lunar cycle. So what will happen is you aim for some empty part of the space. The moon will pass in front of you, make a full orbit around the earth again. And then.

• 41:35Chuck Nice?

  That's where you'll meet it.

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:36Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we don't normally think about it that way, but this is. These are sort of pirouetting performers in a cosmic ballet.

• 41:46Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Choreographed by the forces of gravity.

• 41:48Gary O'Reilly?

  So you don't need a GPS.

• 41:49Chuck Nice?

  That was very eloquent. I don't know. You know, it makes that makes me feel like I should watch a J Lo show. Where the planets are dancing. Okay.

• 42:00Gary O'Reilly?

  You're gonna be watching that on your own.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On your own, yeah, yeah.

• 42:03Chuck Nice?

  Fifty days to drive to the moon, which is just a couple, just a couple of days longer than it takes to do the Daytona 500. So it's good. Which that thing is like, what, seven weeks long?

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 42:17Chuck Nice?

  What, how long?

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can do the math. If it's 500, it's 500 miles. They're going 200 miles an hour. It's a two and a half hour race.

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Is that all? That maybe.

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do the math.

• 42:26Chuck Nice?

  I don't.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's just three hours because it's not, they're not always 200 miles an hour.

• 42:29Chuck Nice?

  I know, but see.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you say, because you say 500 miles, that would take me three days and a, and a, and a pee break to do. Okay, but if you're going 200 miles an hour, just do the math. 500 miles divided by 200 miles per hour.

• 42:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is two and a half hours.

• 42:43Chuck Nice?

  See, I'm gonna have to take your word for that because I don't have my phone with the calculator on it. Because I have a Google brain now.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're, oh, okay. So there's a new app called the Brain App.

• 42:53Chuck Nice?

  There it is. I have a Google brain. I don't do these calculations in my head.

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The software, there's hardware, the brain is wetware. Yes.

• 42:59Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's right.

• 43:01Gary O'Reilly?

  So if we're gonna drive to the moon, we don't need GPS? We need another system of.

• 43:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need a system of orbital mechanics to know that the moon will be there when you arrive in this empty part of space that you're headed towards.

• 43:13Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's not a really, that's a really bad miscalculation to make.

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it would be.

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  It's like when you show up, you're like, hey, guys, shouldn't the moon be here?

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was here.

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  Guys, the moon should have been here like an hour ago. What's happening?

• 43:26Gary O'Reilly?

  It's not like you wind the window down and ask for directions.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But consider, it's not that we are stationary and the moon is moving around us.

• 43:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are not only rotating, we are orbiting the sun. So we are on a moving platform.

• 43:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trying to hit a moving platform.

• 43:42Chuck Nice?

  So are these.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So really, you need to remember your physics for this.

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. So these orbital mechanics work for, you have to do that no matter what. So like the filet lander, no matter what you're shooting in the space to go someplace.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The filet lander.

• 43:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, let him.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the lander from the, from the.

• 44:00Chuck Nice?

  Star Trek.

• 44:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Land on an asteroid.

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  From Star Trek.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rosetta mission. Rosetta mission to a comet had a lander called filet.

• 44:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is mostly a European mission. Yeah.

• 44:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, but it didn't succeed then.

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 44:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Is that what you're telling me?

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they.

• 44:17Chuck Nice?

  No, they actually.

• 44:18Gary O'Reilly?

  We lost a, we lost a Mars rover, didn't we? Beagle.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because there was a mismatch of, was that the one where they mismatched Newtons of thrust and pounds of thrust?

• 44:31Gary O'Reilly?

  It looked like a really sophisticated.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there was the.

• 44:33Chuck Nice?

  It's a measurement.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The measurement, yeah.

• 44:35Chuck Nice?

  So it's the disparity in measurements that caused it to screw up.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The engineers did one thing, the scientists did another, and we lost an entire.

• 44:42Gary O'Reilly?

  It looked like a really complicated skateboard, if I'm from memory. There we go.

• 44:48Chuck Nice?

  So, well, there you go. If you're going to drive to the moon, the thing that you have to make sure of is your orbital mechanics.

• 44:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because on Earth, you're driving to something that you see it's there and you just vector towards it.

• 44:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't do that in space. Yeah.

• 45:00Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 45:01Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, so notes for the future. Remember, you heard it here first. Sir, what a pleasure.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a fun show. Yeah. We did all the tweets.

• 45:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we did.

• 45:11Gary O'Reilly?

  And you're gonna have to tweet more.

• 45:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, now you're gonna have to make more tweets about NASCAR.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so I think there's a, there was another NASCAR tweet. I think you missed it.

• 45:20Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I just asked, am I the last person in the world to realize that race car spelled backwards is race car?

• 45:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Dun dun dun.

• 45:37Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute.

• 45:40Chuck Nice?

  Mushroom cloud.

• 45:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so now we've messed with your mind.

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, but race car people, I think, know that because in my, in the response to that Twitter, I tweeted that.

• 45:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they said, yes, you are the last person in the world to know this.

• 45:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a palindrome, right?

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot.

• 45:58Chuck Nice?

  I think that's called a palindrome.

• 45:59Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 46:00Chuck Nice?

  When it's spelled the same way forward and backwards. I did not know that, by the way.

• 46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Race car.

• 46:04Chuck Nice?

  You are not the last person in the world.

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 46:06Chuck Nice?

  I am the last person in the world now.

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, you know, the longest, like, legit one of those.

• 46:11Chuck Nice?

  The longest legit palindrome?

• 46:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you know, the longest one.

• 46:13Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.

• 46:21Chuck Nice?

  A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. Now I'm reading it backwards in my mind right now. You're correct.

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that's why, that's why you have me on the show.

• 46:33Gary O'Reilly?

  So, listeners, what's your?

• 46:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are longer ones, but they're just weird.

• 46:37Chuck Nice?

  That's like my, that's my go-to, right? So Neil says something and I go, hmm, you're right.

• 46:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I feel like bitch slapping him. It's like, what?

• 46:47Chuck Nice?

  And then I, and then I basically get to take credit for your brain. He's like, let me think about this, Neil. God, you're right.

• 46:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so the thing is, if I were actually wrong, I'd want to know immediately.

• 46:58Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I put, I invest a lot of energy trying to get it right. But I, I can't be right 100% of all times I'm ever speaking.

• 47:05Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I welcome comments if people think I did something right.

• 47:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh, and there's a lot of them.

• 47:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 47:11Gary O'Reilly?

  That's it.

• 47:12Chuck Nice?

  That's our show?

• 47:13Gary O'Reilly?

  That's our show. Once again, we have proved every day is a school day. And play with science and you get watch out.

• 47:21Chuck Nice?

  You get no brakes NASCAR is coming.

• 47:25Gary O'Reilly?

  No brakes. Yeah, that's the way it is. It's been playing with science. Thank you so much to Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 47:30Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 47:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Chuck and I will be back soon. Stick around for our next show.