Small Gr.11 physics summary + some safety facts!!
From the previous posts, it can be seen that a car crash uses many parts of basic physics. All three Newton’s laws of motion are included in the list of equations used in the calculations of car crashes. Static, kinetic, and frictional forces all play a large part in the physics of car crashes as well. Momentum, and collision elasticity are another large factor, however they are part of the Gr.12 physics series and will be explained in another series of posts.
(Three way accident!!!! I find these images strangely amusing to look at, but I really shouldn't, to be honest... because they're not fun to actually experience.)
The biggest problem in a car crash is the acceleration the passenger experiences throughout a crash. It is said that the average human can experience an acceleration of 20g without injury. (The value of g being 9.8m/s, the speed of gravity. So, 20g would be 20x9,8 m/s^2)
Recently, people are trying to design cars that can have a seat belted passenger hit a solid barrier at 50km/h and survive! In this design, they would include things that would prevent the engine block from reversing into the passenger. Parts of the car would collapse instead of the steering wheel backing into the passenger, such as an entire front of a car. An efficient crumpling of a car's frontal side would result in a lot of the force being absorbed and not transferred to the passenger or passengers sitting inside of the vehicle.
Besides that, there are regulations set by the government that say the car doors should not open, the windshield should stay in place and that nothing should intrude the passenger compartment at 50km/h, in the case of a car accident.
It is said that 59% of injury producing accidents are front end collisions, therefore there would be a major positive effect to designing cars that crumple uniformly at the front or end so they would absorb a large amount of force and decrease the amount of damage that goes to the passenger during car crashes, as I have discussed in the earlier paragraph.
