24
Jan
Here we will look at many areas of physics occurring in this car chase in Dallas.
First find the momentum of the truck:
1 kilogram = 2.20462262 pounds Mass of average pick-up truck: 7,300lbs.
Velocity of the car right before impact: 10.4 m/s
Momentum = mass x velocity
p = (7,300/2.20462261) x 10.4 m/s
p= 34,436 kg*m/s
As you see on the graph above, in the onset of the crash the truck is going 36mph (1 mph = 0.44704 m/s). The truck then proceeds to slow down rapidly at -31m/s/s, but only slows to 23mph right before contact. Then the collision only ended lasted 0.4 seconds, which caused a lot of damage as the energy from the truck was transferred rapidly to the near stationary car.
January 29th, 2010 at 7:38 am
oh Mr. basler! you are so talented with loggerpro
January 29th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
that wasn’t my post
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:06 pm
The fact that it took only .4 seconds to stop is not a good thing! From our unit last semester we learned that the longer the crash takes, the better the chance is for survival, allowing more of the force not to impact you. This guy will spend much time in the hospital if not in traffic court/jail.
February 5th, 2010 at 11:22 am
It’s unfortunate that the crash only lasted .4 seconds. If the crash could have been lengthened. Even though whoever was driving the car needed to be stopped, they don’t deserve that wicked case of whiplash, which might have been made a little less worse by a longer crash. Why was the driver fleeing police?
February 8th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Very well done, I hope car dealers use something like loggerpro to determine what they need to do to improve vehicles. It’s kind of wierd looking at this type of thing and realizing (at last) that this stuff can be applied to the real world.
February 11th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
It is always nice to see data plots of brief (<1 second) events to better understand them and fully realize their effects.