If an apple is throw from a freight train side door how far will it go if train is going 30 m.p.h.?

What is the ambient wind? In what direction is it blowing and at what speed?

Welcome to Fluther.

You’ve left out far too much information. The mass of the apple is critical.

You should also state that the forward throw is at 0° relative to the motion of the train (if that is your intent), or any allowed offset.

The direction of the throw’s vertical angle is also critical. An apple thrown at 45° relative to the ground (and I suppose we should also assume a flat plain / plane surface for the train tracks, too?) will likely go farthest.

As @elbanditoroso notes, ambient wind is also a factor.

Finally, it is also critical to know the strength of the thrower, or at least the force imparted by the thrower. “A toss forward” by a child is not the same “throw” as a Major League baseball pitcher’s best effort.

It’s also necessary to know the height of the thrower relative to the ground.

Really, you need to sort of sketch this out on paper first to see what a solution requires.

The factor governing how far it will travel is how long it will take to hit the ground.

As @CWOTUS mentions, the launch angle has a lot to do with it, plus the height from the ground when thrown.

And no, it will not be the same distance if launched to the opposite of the direction of travel.

I project it will travel all the way into the thrower’s face.

…and he thought he was asking a simple question…

Is this homework?

There isn’t enough information to answer all your questions, but I can answer your second question, “Would it be the same distance if you threw it in the opposite direction of the moving train?”

If you threw it in the opposite direction of the train’s motion, it would go significantly less far. The motion of the train would cancel against the velocity given to the apple by the throw, whereas if you throw in the same direction as the train, the two velocities add together to make the apple move much faster and therefore go much farther.

About 45 feet plus the distance the apple falls to the ground from it’s highest point plus the lateral distance the apple travels away from the train..

Depends on your core strength

I want to add that my answer only applies if you’re using the Earth as a frame of reference to measure “how far” something went. If you want to know how far the apple went relative to you, on the train that’s a much different question.

I imagine it depends on apple.

An iPhone would likely go further because of its smaller size and wind resistance (and weight). A macBook is heavier and considerably larger, meaning that it would be slowed by the wind. And an ipad is somewhere in the middle.

What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen apple?

Is it a Gala apple or a Washington apple?

Huh? I… I don’t know that.

Your mother was a Granny Smith and your father smelt of apple cider!

In addition to the helpful clarifications that @Mariah added, it must be assumed that the train is on Earth (well, of course, right? we don’t know of trains on any other planets or moons), where we can assume knowledge of the gravitational effect of the planet, but should we assume that the train is also at sea level? The air at sea level is qualitatively different from the air in much higher elevations – denser, so apples (or baseballs, for example) thrown at Coors Stadium in Denver, Colorado, travel generally farther than apples (or baseballs) thrown with equal force and trajectory at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, because of the reduced density of the air at the higher elevation. And trains are not at all uncommon in Colorado.

For that matter, what is the weather at the time of the throw? Not only wind, but temperature, humidity and precipitation, if any, will have direct effects on apples or baseballs thrown in the outdoors from trains.

Is the train even in America?

I’m just going to take a wild stab at this. When the apple leaves your hand it’s going 30+ mph because you threw it. 1 second later it’s going 15 mph, then one second after that it’s going 7.5 mph and so on until it falls down. Unless it’s a golden apple from the golden goose. That’s a whole other set of physics.

@Dutchess_III Where do you get velocity declining at a rate of 50%/second?

Of course, Zeno would say the apple never hits the ground.

Because….I said so? :D Hell, I dunno! There has to be a consistent rate of decline, but I have no idea what it could be or how to figure it out. 50% / sec sounds as good as anything.

The horizontal velocity doesn’t change once it leaves the thrower’s hand (if you ignore wind resistance etc); it moves at a constant horizontal velocity and accelerates downward until it hits the ground.

Of course, @Mariah‘s response just above applies to a “dropped” apple. We’ve already listed some of the qualifications required for a “thrown” apple. And we haven’t even considered the fact that the train can pass over a canyon bridge, or have a train come from, say, Chicago on an adjoining track at 90 mph. When would the apple get to New York?

My answer just above also applies to a thrown apple.

OK, I will put these parameters around it.

~ The train is in Kansas.
~ There is no wind.
~There is no rain.
~ There is a 30% chance of snow, but it’s not snowing at the moment.
~ There are no clouds.
~ It’s115 degrees
~ The terrain is flat.
~ There are no other trains.
~ There are no flies or mosquitoes that could run into the ball to slow it down.
~ The apple is thrown as hard as the person can throw. Lets say…40 mph.
~ It is a Granny Smith apple, of average size. .. IDK, 3 ounces? It does have some bruising on it from practice throws earlier.
~ I threw it 3 degrees upward.
~ It’s freaking night time!
~ THERE ARE NO WORMS, ONLY BRUISING!!!
~ THE RELATIVE HUMIDITY IS 10%!
~ ARE YOU DONE NOW? I’M RUNNING OUT OF EDIT TIME!

Go @Mariah!

Still missing key info lol. Did he throw the apple perfectly horizontally?

@Dutchess_III – is it day or night? What’s the relative humidity?

And most important – are there worms in the apple, that might affect the density?

[See edits, kids. sigh. ]

Oh, and I didn’t throw it. Someone else did.

@Mariah, the launch degree was stated as 3° upward, which I presume means 3° from a line tangent to Earth normal at that point. (We still don’t know what part of Kansas, because elevation from sea level is still relevant.)

I also doubt the meteorological data: there’s no 30% chance of snow if the temperature is 115°F, so I question the validity of the other instrumentation and predictive data. Relative humidity isn’t even reported, even if we could trust the data. Plus, no one will have the energy to throw an apple from a train at night in such hot weather, in Kansas or elsewhere. (We also need to know if the thrower is somehow encumbered by safety gear, because one doesn’t simply lean out of a train going 30 mph to throw an apple forward at 40 mph. There has to be some kind of restraint applied. One doubts whether Federal rules would even permit the throw in the first place.)

EDIT: And if the ambient temperature is 115 °C, then it’s not even a survivable event without highly restrictive protective clothing.

Yeah, she added the 3 degrees as an edit after my comment.

I’m treating this as a basic projectile problem as that seems to be the intent in the OP – I don’t think the OP wanted us to take into account nonsense like the weather or even air resistance.

One last important thing though. How high off the ground is the thrower?

I’m also wondering about how high the questioner is, but that has no bearing on the question itself.

Have any lacerations, chaws or chomps been made on the apple which could affect its aerodynamic properties, or should we assume scoffing sounds here that this is some kind of “ideal ballistics” problem?

Is the stem still attached to the apple, and if so, what is its orientation at the time of the throw? Depending on the shape and attachments to the apple – plus the aforementioned potential mastication craters – and in addition to the grip of the thrower: was this thrown with no spin, like a knuckleapple (there’s a word for the day, for sure!), or a slider, curveapple, or fastapple?

This is not a simple problem, and I scoff, snarf and bridle at any notion that such considerations are “nonsense”.

It’s in Newton, Kansas.

You question the validity of my instrumentation and predictive data?? How dare you! (It’s Kansas. Anything can happen here. The temp could plummet to 30 degrees in 15 minutes.)

Well, the thrower is IN the train so..what 4 feet off the ground?

And it’s @Seek. “Seek threw the apple, officer.” She doesn’t have on safety gear but she’s balanced on big stack of chairs YOLO bitches. So, make that…8 feet off the ground. But she’s 4 feet back in the train so she won’t fall out. So you have to factor that in, too.

Go @Mariah!

Okay, despite the variables posed by @Dutchess_III, let us be easy on ourselves.

If a man’s shoulder is 16 feet above the grade, then it will take one second to fall to earth. If he throws a baseball with the velocity of a high school pitcher (80 mph), throwing forward on a train going 30 mph will have the apple moving at 110 mph.

110 miles per hour equals 161.333 feet per second. So 161’ 4” is how far it would go forward from that height.

Thrown back ward, it would be the equivalent of 50 mph forward, so it would land 73’ 4” from where it was thrown.

If he threw it back ward it would hit the back of the inside of the train which is not 73 feet wide.

@Dutchess_III If it would hit the wall of the boxcar throwing backwards, it would also hit the wall of the boxcar throwing forward.

Ouch. I’m wincing at the thought of a man’s shoulder falling 16’ to earth in a second. That’s a second he will surely regret for the rest of his life.

I’m lazy so I’m using this: http://www.convertalot.com/ballistic_trajectory_calculator.html

If he throws it in the direction of the train’s motion with the parameters set by @Dutchess_III it goes 27.7 meters

If he throws it opposite the train’s motion it goes 3.23 meters.

Now we just need a train (with an open, empty box car) going 30 mph, a few bushels of apples, an understanding crew and some time to perform the necessary experiment to validate the predictions. As always, Kansas is optional.

One final question.

The OP specified a freight train. Would the calculation be different if it were a passenger train?

Excellent question! We had never considered the effect of the track, for one thing. (And of course we assumed a constant 30 mph, which seems unlikely for most passenger trains.)

But I think it has to be a freight train, due to the extreme unlikelihood of having a boxcar attached to a passenger train. Of course, with Amtrak running the way it does and with FEMA plans for our future… who knows any more? How crowded is the boxcar on a passenger train likely to be, and would we be throwing the apple through the boarded-up door?

In addition, is the thrower left-handed or right-handed? No one even asked that. I notice also that there has been no correction mentioned whatsoever for the Coriolis effect.

Elementary problem, indeed!

I halfway suspect that anyone goofy enough to throw apples from a slow train on a hot night in Kansas when it might be snowing soon is probably drunk or high to begin with, and repeatability of the experimental conditions will be problematic at best.

What if it was a bullet train and going 120? What if the OP was wrong?

And no one has mention the aurora borealis, either. It’s magnetic and all. What if someone put a razor blade in the apple?

Won’t the apple just go as far as you throw it,regardless of how fast the train is going?

@greatfullara, no, the speed of the throw is changed by the movement of the train. You’re imagining the apple’s motion relative to you, on the train, while the question is asking about the apple’s motion relative to the Earth.

Actually, @Mariah, we’ve only assumed that the final position of the apple is relative to the surface of the Earth and the starting place of the throw. What if the question is about the position of the apple with respect to the position of the Sun, the Moon, Alpha Centauri or some other place we don’t even know about yet?

@greatfullara assume the train is going 30 mph south. You throw it to the west’ out of the side door, at 10 mph. When it leaves your hand its’ going 30 mph south (because of the train) but also 10 mph west because thats how fast you threw it.
And then you have to take into consideration the speed of the rotation of the earth.
And that is when I just be quiet and listen to @Mariah and @CWOTUS