High School Does acceleration affect impact energy vs constant velocity?

[sophiecentaur]

That can happen momentarily in an elastic collision.

Yes; as with a bouncy spring but does this relate to a car collision? Only in Bugs Bunny lol.
The scenario is a bit undefined but, then, the whole problem is a bit vague. Without some disciplined Physics we can’t conclude anything.

 

[Dale]

Yes; as with a bouncy spring but does this relate to a car collision? Only in Bugs Bunny lol.
The scenario is a bit undefined but, then, the whole problem is a bit vague. Without some disciplined Physics we can’t conclude anything.

I don’t think the question is specific to car collisions. It seems to me that the OP just wants the simplest basic principles to use to reason. So simplifications like elastic collisions and Hooke’s law are specifically requested.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I don’t think the question is specific to car collisions. It seems to me that the OP just wants the simplest basic principles to use to reason. So simplifications like elastic collisions and Hooke’s law are specifically requested.

Except he is using car driving as a scenario. Are we discussing a lab experiment with an object hitting a spring / buffer? No, I don’t think so. The OP seems to want to do the whole thing in one go and doesn’t seem to accept that the full scenario is very complicated. If the scenario involves an instantaneous collision then it doesn’t matter whether the object is accelerating or not. Hooke’s law cannot come into it in zero time. If the impact takes time and displacement then more details are needed.
The only collisions discussed in elementary Physics are with idealised billiard balls etc. and possibly with coefficient of restitution less than unity. That’s a single impact with a given approach velocity. Those problems are simple and soluble. Introducing car crashes is miles further along the learning path.
I think the requests for Hooke’s law etc are basically requests for ways to approach the problem. The formulae are just tools and advice is needed how and when to apply them. So we have to start with a sensible problem.

 

[Dale]

Except he is using car driving as a scenario.

I don’t think that car collisions are central to their question. They mentioned it once after many posts either not specifically about cars or even about things that were explicitly not cars.