What If You Could Teleport?

What if you could teleport with one blink? You can only go where you can see, and landing is the hard part. It's Dad's 50th birthday: can you get him from Kansas to the Grand Canyon before sunset? Where would you teleport first? Drop your next "what if" in the comments. Selected source links (details below): NASA Earth: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary... Kansas study (2003): https://improbable.com/airchives/samp... U.S. Standard Atmosphere (1976): https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19770... NPS dunes: https://www.nps.gov/grsa/planyourvisi... U.S. time zones: https://www.transportation.gov/regula... NOAA sunset: https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/ Chapters 0:00 Anywhere you can see 0:49 Dad's postcard 1:28 980 miles to go 1:57 1,500 feet up 3:42 Where'd the mountains go? 5:36 One hour of sun 6:51 The last mountain 7:28 Five minutes of sun Sources & notes • How far you can see: on flat ground the horizon is about 1.22 × √(eye height in feet) miles away (simple geometry with Earth's radius of about 3,959 miles, NASA Earth Fact Sheet; atmospheric refraction adds a little). From a 20-ft roof that's about 5.5 miles, from a 150-ft grain elevator about 15 miles and from a 1,500-ft TV tower about 47 miles. From a 14,000-ft peak standing about 9,000 ft above the desert floor, it's roughly 115 miles. • Kansas really is flatter than a pancake: in 2003, geographers Mark Fonstad, William Pugatch and Brandon Vogt compared a laser-scanned pancake with a USGS elevation profile of Kansas. On a scale where 1 is perfectly flat, the pancake scored about 0.957 and Kansas about 0.9997 (Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 3). Later studies found a few other states even flatter. • Kansas has broadcast masts around 1,500 ft tall (the KWCH tower near Burrton, built in 1965, is listed at about 1,500 ft). Fiction: the tower, the grain elevator and the water tower in the story are invented. • Earth turns once every 23 hours 56 minutes (NASA Earth Fact Sheet), and the ground carries you with it. Our estimate: if teleporting let you keep your old velocity, you'd arrive moving relative to the new ground by up to Earth's spin rate times the distance: about a quarter of a mile per hour for every mile you jump east or west (40 miles ≈ 10 mph, 115 miles ≈ 27 mph), and less for jumps toward the north or south (about 10 mph for 55 miles north-northwest in Arizona). Part of that speed points sideways and part points down into the ground. Fiction: teleporting at all, and the rule that you keep your velocity. • Airliners typically cruise at roughly 500–570 mph (about Mach 0.78–0.85 at cruising altitude, e.g. Boeing 737/787 published cruise speeds). Jumping onto one from the ground would mean meeting it at that speed. • Pikes Peak in Colorado is 14,115 ft (4,302 m) tall (USGS / Pikes Peak – America's Mountain). At about 14,000 ft the air pressure is roughly 59% of sea level, so each breath carries about 40% fewer oxygen molecules (U.S. Standard Atmosphere, 1976). • Upslope clouds: when moist air from the east is pushed up against Colorado's Front Range, it cools and forms low clouds and fog over the plains while the high peaks can stick out above them (NOAA / National Weather Service, Boulder). Seen from above, that undercast looks like a sea of clouds. • Star Dune and Hidden Dune in Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, Colorado, are tied as the tallest dunes in North America at about 741 ft (225 m) from base to summit (National Park Service). • Most of Arizona does not observe daylight saving time (the Navajo Nation does), so in October it runs an hour behind Colorado. The sun, of course, doesn't care. • Humphreys Peak is the highest point in Arizona at 12,633 ft (USGS). On clear days you can see the Grand Canyon from the summit (Grand Canyon Trust). The Grand Canyon is about a mile deep (National Park Service). • Sunset at Grand Canyon Village in mid-October is around 5:50 p.m. Arizona time (NOAA Solar Calculator). Fiction: the exact route, the towns and every landing. • A few days before full, a waxing gibbous Moon rises in the afternoon and is already high in the east at sunset (NASA). • Fiction: the minute of 'seeing spots' after a long blink (real flash blindness after a bright flash can last from seconds to minutes, but the rule here is invented). Falling: from rest, gravity takes about 1.3 seconds to get you to roughly 28 mph (v = g·t). • Fiction: teleporting, carrying your dad, and everyone walking away from a 27 mph landing on asphalt. Please don't slide down a highway in sneakers. One Small If — One small change. Every consequence. Subscribe:    / @onesmallif   #whatif #teleportation #animation