Reflect on the Big Picture A police officer may warn that \"speed kills.\" In vi

Question

Reflect on the Big Picture A police officer may warn that "speed kills." In video games, high-speed crashes are common. Suppose a particular scene in a game required the following elements: A high performance motorcycle must crash into a barrier and be stopped. A small scooter must crash into another section of the same barrier and be stopped. The forces exerted as each vehicle collides with the barrier change the shape of that section of the barrier in addition to stopping the vehicle. The time required to stop each vehicle must be realistic. In a paragraph, explain how you could use the concept of momentum and net force to make each simulated crash realistic. In general, how could you use momentum and Newton's laws of motion to predict the amount that each section of the barrier changes shape?

Explanation / Answer

The morotcycle and the scooter both have momentum and when they hit the barrier their momentum will translate into force. Since the motorcycle has more mass and is likely moving faster at the point of contact, it will have a larger momentum. When it hits the barrier the barrier will move backwards in order to absorb the momentum over a longer period of time. The barrier will likely apply the same force to both the scooter and the motorcycle. But, since the motorcycle has more momentum, the barrier will have to move more to absorb all of the momentum because more momentum means more energy and energy is force times distance. To make it the most realistic, the barrier should bend backwards a little to stop the scooter and a lot to stop the motorcycle. To generalize, we can say that the faster the moving object is and the more mass the moving object has, the more the barrier will bend back to absorb the larger momentum and the more it is going to change shape.

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