Humint Events Online: Examples of Collisions

Monday, January 30, 2006

Examples of Collisions

1) Egg going 500 mph into a stiff piece of cardboard.

Will the egg smash through the cardboard intact, leaving an egg-shaped hole? Or will it splatter completely on the outside, just denting the cardboard? Or will it be a mixture of these two outcomes?

I'm guessing the latter.

2) Wineglass going sideways 500 mph into a pane of glass.

Will the wineglass smash through the pane intact, leaving a glass-shaped hole? Or will the glass shatter completely upon hitting the pane? Or will it be cross between these two outcomes?

I'm guessing a cross outcome.

3) A large model airplane going 500 mph into a chain-link fence, where the fence has sheets of plywood behind it perpendicular to the fence (these mimic floor slabs in a building).

Will the plane smash into pieces against the fence, barely penetrating it? Will the plane slice through the fence and the plywood and disappear into darkness? Or will it be a combination of these two outcomes?

I'm guessing the plane will smash into pieces against the fence, barely penetrating it.

A real-life test of a high speed collision was done by NASA, where a piece of hard foam/plastic was shot at 500 mph into part of the wing of the space shuttle. A movie of the event can be seen here.

Basically, the foam bounced off the wing and started disintegrating. Interestingly, on this two foot piece of foam, a significant distortion could be seen immediately in the foam piece upon impact, when the film is analyzed by slow motion. This distortion must have occurred within milliseconds, and shows that a flexible object can alter its shape extremely quickly.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Powered by Blogger