The discussion centers on the force required to damage a car during a head-on collision, specifically when both vehicles are of the same model and weight. It is established that if the lengths of the cars are compressed by 2 meters during impact, damage occurs. Calculating the mean deceleration at a speed of 100 km/h allows for the determination of the force needed to halt the vehicles. Additionally, the conversation highlights that damage is influenced by the area over which the force is applied and the nature of the force itself, rather than force alone.
PREREQUISITESStudents in physics or engineering, automotive safety researchers, and professionals involved in crash testing and vehicle design will benefit from this discussion.
Professionals do this with crash tests. You cannot do it with physics. There are too many unknowns. It is an engineering problem. After a head-on crash that appears to result in no damage, energy absorbing bumpers may, in fact, have suffered irreversible changes. The next crash may not be as pretty.Alexander Baine said:I am working on a science project, just in my spare time, and for this project I needed to know the amount of force it would take one car to damage another car, but the same model (so same weight, strength etc.) thanks for you help
"Damaged" is a bit of understatement here.Hesch said:If the lengths of the cars are compressed 2 m, the cars are damaged.
This is pretty much the same thing bcrowell said in post #7 and is also similar to what I said in post #6 when I talked about "keying" a car.Svein said:I expect the pressure at a given point of the car is more important than the force. I know (I have seen it) that it is possible to drive an awl through the bodywork by force of hand alone. The same force applied to a large object (say the hand itself) does almost no damage.
Sorry. Sloppy reading.Chestermiller said:This is pretty much the same thing bcrowell said in post #7 and is also similar to what I said in post #6 when I talked about "keying" a car.