zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

:
: Hi Guys,

: If anyone saw Michael Schumachers crash at the
: UK Grand Prix a few years ago has to ask how
: he survived.

: He hit a wall head on, going flat out &
: broke one leg.

: I remember reading a report on the various G
: forces. Basically his car stopped from about
: 150 mph to 0 in 2 feet. That is an enourmous
: amount of G-force. ( basically enough to
: pulverise most of your internal organs )

: There are various factors that saved his live ,
: he hit rubber tyres, that cushioned the
: blow, the car has a "crumplezone"
: designed to fold up & reduce the G
: passed onto the driver & the seat belts
: stretched (as they were designed to do ).

: I found a website describing a car crash at 30
: mph & what the seatbelts should do.

: Seatbelts in a car crash . Don't worry it is
: NOT graphic, just factual.

: So what does this Off Topic waffle tell us ? (
: my post I mean )....

: a 30 mph crash into a solid object would
: subject you to 150 G ( without a belt )
: & 20 G WITH a belt.

: The figure being quoted in this thread is 5000
: G. does that equate to 1000 mph ? ( I know
: Dell has asked in G is linear - I don't know
: ).

: Finally, I'm sure the human body CAN survive
: more than 9 G's ( for a VERY short period of
: time ), but I think at 9 G's most of us
: black out.

: Don't we have an physics specialists in the
: forum ?

I'm not a physicist, but I'm a chemist with a lot of experience testing the physical properties of polymers. Does that count?

Seriously, I personally don't like the term "g-forces" because "g" alone is not truly a force, but the acceleration due to gravity. "g" is a constant value, which is 9.8 meters per second squared. A FORCE has to take into account the mass of the object, since force equals mass times acceleration. If you want to know the actual force, you would multiply the constant acceleration "g" times the weight of the object.

I'm not sure if that helps at all, but I thought I'd post it just in case.