How Can One Visualize a Billion Newtons of Force?

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Visualizing a billion Newtons of force can be challenging due to its immense scale. It is equivalent to the weight of approximately 100,000 tons or the force required to accelerate a 2-ton car from 0 to 60 mph in just 0.05 seconds. Calculations involving falling objects, such as an 11,000 kg mass dropped from a height, illustrate the complexities of estimating impact forces and distances traveled after impact. Discussions highlight the importance of understanding energy and force relationships, with comparisons made to everyday scenarios, like powering a human body. The conversation reflects a shared passion for physics and the intricacies of force calculations.
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i'm a physics fanatic.
i love the concepts of science and physics in general.
so this isn't for homework or anything just for the fascination of the science.

i need some help putting a number into perspective and instead of just googling for methods to figure it out, i wanted to join a forum to actually talk to other people about the process and whatnot.
but anyway,

how can i put a known amount of Newton force into perspective.
my number is over a billion Newton.
it seems hard to put into perspective because it's so large, and I'm not sure exactly how to calculate or convert it to other principals that aren't exactly related.
 
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F = m*g. So a billion Newtons is the equivalent of (m = F/g) 1E9/9.8 kg.
So the force you have from about 100,000 tons of weight.
 
Another way to think of it is that 1,000,000,000 Newtons will take an average 2 ton car from 0 to 60 mph in one twenty-thousandth of a second.

Oh, and welcome to Physics Forums, spezticle!
You've come to the right place.
 
alxm said:
F = m*g. So a billion Newtons is the equivalent of (m = F/g) 1E9/9.8 kg.
So the force you have from about 100,000 tons of weight.

well, maybe i did my math wrong.. maybe not...
11793kg is dropped 9 meters
so it's velocity before impact is 13.281566172707194 m/s
and it's KE just before impact is 1040142.6000000001 J
and figuring that distance traveled after impact was .019 meters i got 54,744,347.368421055 Newtons
while figuring in distance traveled as .001 m i got the number over a billion and a half N
but I'm coming to the problem figuring the distance traveled after impact.
i know in order to accurately estimate this, i have to figure in density and that's where it gets complicated for me. everything up to this point was pretty easy.

11,000kg falling 9m, considering the object is flat and wide in width but short in height and length landing on the wide side and the impact surface is quite hard... figuring 'quite hard' isn't specific enough. from a related scenario i could see that the distance traveled after impact was practically nothing at all because of the hard surface it fell upon. figuring in 0 for distance traveled just doesn't work. you can't divide by zero and it's theoretically impossible for an object, especially at 11,000kg to move 0 distance after impact especially at 9m.
 
spezticle said:
but I'm coming to the problem figuring the distance traveled after impact.

Woah, yea. The time of a collision is not something you can easily calculate. It's based not only on density, but on the chemistry of the objects colliding. You can calculate the impulse, which is the force of the collision, times the time of the collision, but you'd be hard pressed to determine values for force and time separately without the use of simulation or video analysis, etc.
 
It is enough energy to power an adult body for about 115 days.
 
LostConjugate said:
It is enough energy to power an adult body for about 115 days.
Wait, what? A billion Newtons?

Oh, you mean this, right?
spezticle said:
and it's KE just before impact is 1040142.6000000001 J
 
Well a Watt is Joules/sec is Newton Meters/sec. There is 86,000 seconds in a day, it takes roughly 100W to power a human body. I just did a quick calculation, maybe I missed something :)
 
1040142.6 J @ 100W would last 10401.426 seconds, which is .12 days, not 115.

Where did you get 115? I'll work backwards:
115 days @ 100W would be... ah ha! I see what you did. 115 days @ 100W would be close to one billion Joules. The OP asked for a description of a billion Newtons, not Joules.
 
  • #10
Archosaur said:
1040142.6 J @ 100W would last 10401.426 seconds, which is .12 days, not 115.

Where did you get 115? I'll work backwards:
115 days @ 100W would be... ah ha! I see what you did. 115 days @ 100W would be close to one billion Joules. The OP asked for a description of a billion Newtons, not Joules.

all of this is why i love physics and physics fanatics.
going through the processes, correcting mistakes, math... <3
 
  • #11
spezticle said:
all of this is why i love physics and physics fanatics.
going through the processes, correcting mistakes, math... <3

Are you a student, spezticle? What classes have you taken?
 
  • #12
Archosaur said:
Are you a student, spezticle? What classes have you taken?

i'm not a student now. i was in college a few years ago for computer networking administration, but it didn't work out very well because of financial reasons... I've been kind of between a rock and a hard place for a while as far as that part of my life goes, always trying to find work suitable enough because i don't have enough upper education... but that's a different topic indeed.
i haven't taken many classes in the fields of science at all... well, as far as anything past high school general stuff. the most advanced science class i took in high school was the first physics class, but my tiny farmer town didn't really offer a lot really complicated things, nor opportunity.

Everything i know about math, physics, computers and programming is self taught and personal study. Seeing as i don't really have a full time career to consume all my time, and I'm not the most extroverted person either, i spend almost all my free time doing pc related tasks or reading about theory in science. The most fascinating fields for me are quantum physics and the contemplation of energy and what energy really is and where it came from.
 
  • #13
as far as the reason for my original post, the situation i was pulling the numbers from was an unfortunate accident that happened in milwaukee, wi yesterday. a 27,000 pound chuck of a parking structure broke off and killed somebody. my mother was pretty upset about it when she heard about it, just because it's a very sad topic if you end up reading the details about it. i tried comforting her the best way i knew how, explaining to her with real numbers exactly how little the guy actually felt and how completely unaware he was because I'm sure having endured those forces, considering he didn't know that it was coming, i know for sure he sure didn't feel anything before it was over. oh, and i also now realize as more information was released, i was off on my estimates of a 9meter fall, but a 2.7 meter fall, btw, so yeah, that changes everything, too
 
  • #14
Well, I definitely recommend browsing these forums, signing up for the http://www.sciambookclub.com/" .
 
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  • #15
Archosaur said:
Well, I definitely recommend browsing these forums, signing up for the http://www.sciambookclub.com/" .

thanks, I'll definitely do that. i want to learn so much more and eventually be able to use my knowledge for purposes other than contemplating scenario forces or whatever else.
 
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  • #16
Of course, nothing beats the traditional teacher-student setup. If you have any access to a community college, or a private tutor, that really would be the best way to learn.
 
  • #17
spezticle said:
well, maybe i did my math wrong.. maybe not...
11793kg is dropped 9 meters
so it's velocity before impact is 13.281566172707194 m/s
and it's KE just before impact is 1040142.6000000001 J
and figuring that distance traveled after impact was .019 meters i got 54,744,347.368421055 Newtons
.

It the future do not share the entire contents of your calculators screen. You would have given all the necessary information had you just written:

"velocity before impact is 13.3 m/s and it's KE just before impact is 1.04 x10 ^6 J"
More digits is not meaningful information, the extra digits are just annoying noise.
 
  • #18
Integral said:
It the future do not share the entire contents of your calculators screen. You would have given all the necessary information had you just written:

"velocity before impact is 13.3 m/s and it's KE just before impact is 1.04 x10 ^6 J"
More digits is not meaningful information, the extra digits are just annoying noise.

got it :)
 
  • #19
Archosaur said:
1040142.6 J @ 100W would last 10401.426 seconds, which is .12 days, not 115.

Where did you get 115? I'll work backwards:
115 days @ 100W would be... ah ha! I see what you did. 115 days @ 100W would be close to one billion Joules. The OP asked for a description of a billion Newtons, not Joules.

I dropped meters from one side of the equation. Guess you can't do that huh. I seem to remember from dimensional analysis that if something did not exist on both sides of the equation you could drop it. Oh well.

In other words I converted using 1N = 1J.

Edit: Well I looked up converting Newtons to watts here is the answer:
"This is Dimensionally Inconsistent."
 
  • #20
LostConjugate said:
Guess you can't do that huh.

Nope. Joules and Newtons simply measure different things. You can't just equate them like that. The "meters" term is important. I can't figure what you may have learned about dropping unique terms like that... hmm...
 
  • #21
Another perspective:

A billion Newtons is equivalent of two hundred Saturn V moon rockets at takeoff.
 
  • #22
Here's a funny one:
In order for an Olympic hammer thrower to exert a centripetal force of 1,000,000,000 N on the "hammer", he would have to be spinning at 101,696 rpm, which is fast enough to launch the hammer with an initial velocity of 12832.326 m/s, which is about 115% the escape velocity of Earth at the surface, which mean's he'd probably win. :)
Hammerthrow_wire.jpg
 
  • #23
Archosaur said:
which is about 115% the escape velocity of Earth at the surface, which mean's he'd probably win. :)

:smile:

because the other competitors wouldn't have a hammer anymore ?
 
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