Average force to keep something in place during an automobile crash?

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Homework Help Overview

The problem involves a scenario where a mother must exert a force on her baby during an automobile crash, specifically analyzing the average force required to hold the baby in place as the car decelerates rapidly. The subject area includes concepts from dynamics and forces, particularly relating to collisions and motion.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Conceptual clarification, Mathematical reasoning

Approaches and Questions Raised

  • Participants discuss the application of impulse and momentum, questioning the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. There is an emphasis on focusing on the baby rather than the car's collision details. Some participants suggest using Newton's second law to analyze the forces involved.

Discussion Status

The discussion is active, with participants providing guidance on relevant physics concepts and equations that could be applied to the problem. There is an exploration of the necessary deceleration and the implications of the baby’s motion relative to the car's stopping action.

Contextual Notes

Participants note that the problem lacks specific details about the collision object and the dynamics involved, which may affect the analysis. There is also an implicit assumption that the baby must not continue moving forward after the car stops.

katiecrapps
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Homework Statement



Suppose that a seat-belted mother riding in an automobile holds a 10 kg baby in her arms. the automobile crashes and decelerates from 50km/h to 0 in .1 s. what average force would the mother have to exert on the baby to hold it?? do you think she can do this?

Homework Equations





The Attempt at a Solution



I think that you would use the elastic collision equation to solve this but I'm not entirely sure... I'm not very good at solving problems where you convert different equations into something else.
 
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Have you learned about Impulse yet (change in momentum)?

What is force a product of? What's given to you in this problem? Focus on the baby rather than the car's collision, you aren't given any information about the object that the car collides with.
 
Last edited:
You can use Newton's second law to solve this problem Katie.
 
You can use Newton's second law to solve this problem Katie.
 
The problem statement gives an initial velocity U for the baby. You would hope that after time t the final velocity V is zero (otherwise the car will have stopped but baby is still moving and will impact the dash). So you have enough info to work out the deceleration required.

If the mass and deceleration are known you can calculate the force required to achieve it.
 

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