Macca

Transfer of kinetic engery is quote different.

You must also remember this car was hit at the back at 50mph on a lubricated surface the polar moment of inertia will create a spin that far exceed the initial speed.

911SLOW

FIFY and now it's correct

Dude-

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/20...on-collisions/
Once you either run this all through in your head, or watch the episode, if you previously thought that a pair of cars hitting each other head on at 50 mph would cause one of them to experience a 100 mph collision, then you will absolutely change your mind. But, if you now think that two cars running into each other at 50 mph each is the same as one car running into a concrete wall at 50 mph, then you’ve got that wrong. Because, when in the end, you’ve got two recked cars not one, and the energy used to wreck each of those cars as per a 50 mph collision is twice the energy it would have taken to wreck one of them.

So it is like a 100 mph collision, shared evenly by two cars (so each gets 50 mph worth!)


Does that mean we are all right?

Manifold

^ It also depends on the relative masses and energy-absorption capabilities of the colliding objects. GT3 hitting a tomato at 50 mph will smash the tomato and only stain the car. GT3 hitting a huge boulder at 50 mph will mess up the car and only scratch or chip the boulder.

TRAKCAR

What if it is one of those giant tomato's the size of a boulder and its rolling along the road at 50mph??

Manifold

Speed up the tomato and boulder to 50 mph in the other direction and the winners and losers will still be the same. Giant tomato rolling at 50 mph very likely still won't do as much damage as stationary boulder, but I need to run calcs to confirm - how big is the tomato?

TRAKCAR

Giant

Manifold

^

Mike in CA

Best post of the week, maybe longer.....LOL

Gofishracing

I'm sure it was said already but I was laughing again. "Didn't even have time to catch on fire"

aussie jimmy

what if mary was driving her gt3 in poland and the giant tomato crossed her path?

Sierra Mike

One factor that hasn't been raised by anyone is the possibility that the driver accidentally changed down instead of up a gear using either the wrong paddle or moving the stick the wrong way. Couple that with a wet road on Sport Cups would possibly unsettle the back end of the car and especially if it happened whilst driving through standing water. Pure speculation I know but the back end was unsettled in some way and this is a possible explanation.

mqandil

Everyone is assuming the other car or giant tomato that hit the GT3 was only going 50mph. What if the other car or the giant tomato was going at 100 mph?? Would we then believe the GT3 owner story, that he was being a good boy and driving the beast below posted speed limit.

Kidding aside, the damage on this car can only happen at much higher energy levels than 50 mph. I have personally seen few crashes of 911's at higher speeds than 50 mph, but never of course with a giant tomato, and the damage was not nearly as we are seeing here. If any of the engineers in this forum attempted to calculate the amount of force needed to rip the engine out of its mounting and separate it away from the gearbox SAE mounting and through the sheet metal and send it as projectile missile for over 100 ft away, will certainly start developing some respect for the offending giant tomato.

CarObsessed

Speed is always relative. Relative to the oncoming car, both cars decelerated from 100mph to 0.

CarObsessed

First of all, one experiment doesn't make a theory. If that was all that was needed to prove or refute theories...

But it makes sense in a way that we should not think of this as hitting a wall at 100mph because the wall will not absorb crash energy unlike a car. I think we can think of this as one car hitting a stationary one at 100mph. And trying to compare it to a collision to a less-energy-absorbing object like a wall is pointless.

I just want to make sure the number 100 is involved somewhere.