If you uncover a questionable fact or debatable aspect of this week’s Geek Trivia, “(Sonic) boom or bust,” just post it in the discussion area. Every week, yours truly will choose the best quibble from the assembled masses and discuss it in a future edition of Geek Trivia.

This week’s quibble comes from the November 28 edition of Geek Trivia, “Roller (coaster) derby.” My own personal physics fact-checker, Bill Ward, once again nailed me on a slip in Newtonian technobabble.

“Sorry, Jay, but you’ve got a mistake in there; by definition, a pure Gravity coaster can’t do negative Gs… it can only do >=0 G, unless there are inversions. I can’t think of any possible reason that an escape coaster would need an inversion, so your negative G-force comment [about the Orion Emergency Egress System] is incorrect.”

I really ought to start running all my articles by Bill first. Yes, I conflated the terms zero-G and negative-G — my mistake. Thanks for the physics lesson, and keep those quibbles coming.

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