Force during car crash?

Question

If there is a car crash between a large and small vehicle (say a 2000kg SUV and a 1000kg personal car), both accelerating at 3m/s^2, what will the force on each be? The large one would have a 6000N force and the small one 3000N, and the force would be divided...but how come the smaller vehicle is MUCH worse impacted???

Answer 1

Favorite Answer

In a car crash Newton's 3rd law of motion comes into play. This is basically a Law of collision where the forces experienced by the masses have equal magnitude.

However if the collision is inelastic an energy transfer occurs and becomes divided in proportion to the masses. The smaller mass would deform more then the larger mass ,and with the greater heat energy loss.

Example.an Elephant stepping on a banana ,both the banana and the elephant would experience the same force but its the banana that gets squashed.

Source(s): Newton 3rd Law Collision Law of Energy distribution.

Answer 2

What is important is the momentum and the kinetic energy at the impact. If they remain together after the impact all the kinetic energy will be lost but the total momentum is conserved.

By the law of action and reaction the forces will be the same in both vehicles but the damage in the smaller vehicle will be larger because its mass is smaller

Answer 3

According to the newtons third law of Motion,The force on each will be equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.Thus the personal car suffers more damage in comparison to SUV.

Answer 4

the small car is much worse impacted as its the weaker of the two...

even if the small car was acclerating at 10 m/s^2(in which case its force would be 10000N) even then it would be much worse imapcted

and even if it was still it would be worse impacted....

the impact depend on the change in momentum and not on the accelration of the objects at that the time of impact

Answer 5

its no longer impossible-basically gotta discover the proper one for you,additionally you dont wanna have youthful ones as too many crashes you recognize isnt good for the production line! happy,gay at an identical time as im out!

Answer 6

idk!