In order to learn about the physics of car crashes, first we need to learn a little bit about cars and how they work. Most of the time, cars are powered with gasoline, and per liter of gasoline there are about 56 mega joules. Cars take that gasoline and burn it creating chemical energy, which then converts to kinetic energy of motion to the car, but around 80% of the gasoline is lost in the engine. That still leaves us with around 20%, which may not seem like much, but only five teaspoons of gas are needed to accelerate a two ton car, 60 kilometers per hour, plus 1/3 of a cup more to keep the car going at that speed. When a car needs to stop, all of that energy needs to go somewhere, when the brakes are used, the energy is dispersed by heating up, or the energy can be dispersed by the crumpling of metal from the car. Cars were designed to scrunch up when they crash, because that lengthens the span of the car crash so stopping your vehicle doesn't as an intense acceleration. When you have a lot of acceleration in a small time period, and you get in a crash it's very bad for your brain and organs, but cars only have about 50 cm of crumple space. This means that while the car is being squashed, there still needs to be 60 tons of force. The bumpers in the front of the car are designed to take about half of the force from a car crash. I found this video very interesting, but there was a lot going on, so while writing this I had to keep on going back in the video, to make sure I got everything. Overall I learned a lot about cars, which is a topic I've never been very knowledgeable in. A question I have is if you give cars 10 cm of crumple space, would that take all of the force from a crash? It seems like that would be the case, and if so why don't we give cars more crumple space? This video was made by MinutePhysics, if you would like to watch it, it's down below.
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December 2015
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