A car driving from Tucson to Nogales is distracted by some physics students laun

Question

A car driving from Tucson to Nogales is distracted by some physics students launching model rockets in the desert, veers off the road, and
crashes into a cactus. The driver is luckily wearing his seatbelt, which causes him to decelerate from 110 km/hour to a dead stop in
50 milliseconds.

A driver not wearing a seatbelt would fly forward and strike the steering wheel, decelerating much more suddenly –- over, say, 6 ms. What is the acceleration (in "g’s", or multiples of Earth’s gravity) of the driver now?

Explanation / Answer

deceleration of driver

a = change in velocity/time

velocity = 110km/hr = 110*1000/3600 m/s

velocity

v = 30.55m/s

t = 6ms = 6*10^-3 s

deceleration

a = 0- v / t

a = 30.55/ 6*10^-3

a = 5092.5m/s^2

now in terms of g

a = 5092.5/9.8 g

a = 519.65 g

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