If Cars Had Magnets: What Would Happen?

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If two cars equipped with large electromagnets of like poles were accelerated toward each other, they would theoretically repel each other, preventing a collision. However, achieving a strong enough magnetic field to effectively stop the cars would require significant power and space, posing practical challenges. The interaction would resemble driving into a thick gel rather than a solid barrier, as the magnetic force would gradually slow the cars down. The effectiveness of this system would depend on the strength of the magnets and the relative speed of the vehicles. Additionally, for the system to work, all cars would need to have the same magnetic pole facing outward, complicating design considerations.
Chemicist
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Hypothetically, if two cars had large electromagnets with like-magnetic poles, would they repel if accelerated toward each other at a high rate of speed?

Just one of those thoughts you randomly make up in your head.
 
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How 'large' are we talking here? Hypothetically you could get magnets powerful enough to prevent two cars moving toward each other from crashing.

Practicality-wise, it would take a pretty large amount of power to produce a field strong enough to actually stop them. I'm sure there exists something strong enough but fitting it on/in the car might be the problem.
 
denjay said:
How 'large' are we talking here? Hypothetically you could get magnets powerful enough to prevent two cars moving toward each other from crashing.

Practicality-wise, it would take a pretty large amount of power to produce a field strong enough to actually stop them. I'm sure there exists something strong enough but fitting it on/in the car might be the problem.

Yeah I wasn't necessarily talking about this being a possibility - just wanted to know IF a magnetic field could theoretically become powerful enough to stop cars from colliding.
 
Chemicist said:
Yeah I wasn't necessarily talking about this being a possibility - just wanted to know IF a magnetic field could theoretically become powerful enough to stop cars from colliding.

Well then it absolutely can happen. It wouldn't be like hitting a brick wall, it would be more like driving into some kind of gel that got thicker and thicker as you went. Mathematically, being slowed by a magnetic field is different than slowing down through thick gel but the idea is the roughly the same.
 
Thanks for the link, Danger!
 
It would be dependent on the relative velocity of the two cars and the magnetic power of the magnets used. If you were to use low strength magnets I'd advise a slow relative velocity but if you were using stronger magnets such as neodymium magnets (and enough of it) you could use a relatively large velocity. Hope this helped.
 
There is one problem with this scheme... For obvious reasons you would want the whole surface of all cars to have the same pole (eg Let's all agree on North). Where would you put the south pole?

I don't think you can make a sphere that's north on the outside and south on the inside.
 

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