Car Accidents and Physics
Every day, many Americans are hurt or killed in car accidents. Many factors can play into an accident. Road condition, mechanical failure, driver error, or simply an 'act of God'? Despite the countless reasons for a car accident, one factor is always present, no matter what the case: physics. Every accident that has ever occurred has involved physics. Using references found in the class text, in science journals, and on the Internet, I will prove this to you. Take, for example, two cars traveling in opposite directions at 100km/h. One of the drivers dozes off and crosses over the centerline. The two cars hit head on. The driver of car A has remained inside the car and has broken ribs. The driver of car B, however, is on the hood of car A and is pronounced dead at the scene. Cause of death? Disobeying the laws of physics. "Suppose the cars collide head-on and bounce off each other at 4.0 meters per second (9 miles per hour). The collision will change both cars' momentum. But, because no force from outside the system has acted on the cars, their total momentum remains zero"(DiscoverySchool.com). Back to my example, although both cars were going the same speed, one driver lived while the other died. While this may seem like driver A was wearing his lucky tie, probing deeper into the case proves that physics saved his life. Sir Isaac Newton was the first man to explain what happens in a collision. He proposed the idea that "an object will continue in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it" (Hewitt, 27). This theory is better known as Newton's First Law of Motion, or the Law of Inertia. The driver of car B was not wearing a seatbelt, and as a result, was not connected to the body of the car. According to Newton's first law, an object (the car and its occupants) was moving until its course was changed by an external force (car A). When the collision occurred