blueCarImpactForce = blueCarSpeed - redCarSpeed
redCarImpactForce = redCarSpeed - blueCarSpeed
If car A is going 50mph North and car B is going 50mph South and they collide their impact will have an outcome of 0mph.But that can't be right, because if a car hits a stationary object at 0mhp (in other words, it doesn't hit a stationary object) it wouldn't receive any damage, yet two cars colliding at 50mph certainly would (assuming the cars are traveling in polar opposite directions in a vacuum).
Take your hands and clap them. Your hands are at a certain speed while traveling towards each other. When they collide clasp your hands with your fingers.LOL! ;D Funniest answer ever, yet I'm still confused. How can the damage resulting from two cars colliding with an impact force of 0mph match the damage resulting from a single car colliding with a stationary object at 50mph?
As you'll notice your hands go from a certain speed to 0.
That's exactly how colliding cars act if they crash head on into each other.
-Gan
Silverwind, this is insane! Not only are you driving me crazy by talking nonstop about it but now your driving other people crazy.They're not!
I don't think anyone will ever be able to work it out. Test your mind on this instead: Why is a raven like a writing desk?
They're not!I bet theres a way they are.
I bet theres a way they are.
If two cars hit each other, perfectly head to head, and each car was going 50 MPH, you have 100 MPH worth of total damage but it's spread between two cars, so each car would receive about 50 MPH worth of damage.Yeah, exactly. That's what I thought. :)
Doubling the speed that a car hits a wall does not double the damage (at least if you are measuring the damage monetarily). For example, 1 MPH vs 2 MPH are probably about the same - you would just scratch the paint a bit.Well, the difference might not be humanly noticeable, but twice the amount of energy has gone into damaging the car(s). That's actually how the debate started, and then we tried to determine the amount of damage each individual car would receive upon colliding at different speeds (as in, how fast a car would need to be traveling upon collision with a wall in order to receive an equivalent amount of damage to that of the two cars).