This weeks Friday Fun Fact deals oh so appropriately with collisions and smashing into things.
If you increase the amount of time an impact lasts you decrease the force of that impact. Ex: If you double the time, you cut the force in half. If you quadruple the time you divide the force by four, etc.
An illustration of this is the water balloon toss. If you kept your hands still while catching you probably got wet, if you pulled your hands into your body when you caught the balloon you increased the time it took to slow the balloons speed to zero which lessoned the force of impact keeping you nice and dry (and winning a wonderful shiny ribbon).
A more intense and personal test of this will come during high fall training. I am going to he the water balloon and the airbag is going to be the loving hands slowing my descent to earth.
If you like math here is the equation (if you don't like math this is the end of the post so don't torture yourself!)
Fnet = mass x acceleration
(F=ma)
Acceleration = change in velocity/time
(a=Vinitial - Vfinal/t)
Therefore
Fnet = mass x change velocity/time
(F=m x Vinitial - Vfinal/t)
Greg
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