~~Physics Essay~~

~~The Safety Features in Cars~~

~~by: grade 9 student.~~ Word Count: 1,126

Road accidents happen on a daily basis, each day around 3000 people
around the world die due to car accidents and crashes.¹ In Germany alone,
over half a million people and their family/friends are affected by such
accidents. This essay is focusing on the safety features inside of the car
which protect the driver and passengers and how this is linked to physics.
The car safety features include the crumple zones, seatbelts and airbags.

Crumple zones are located at the front and back of a car. In a crash the
crumple zones turn the kinetic energy of the moving car into mostly
thermal (heat) and sound energy to slow down the car. The purpose of
crumple zones on cars is so that it slows the vehicle down a bit before it
stops, so it takes more time to stop therefore fewer injuries will be caused.
As Newton’s first law says, when something is moving it will keep moving
at the same velocity until another force acts upon it. This is what causes
injuries in the crash; the car/driver still want to keep moving however if
the other force is strong or the car/driver are moving fast the car will
decelerate in a short amount of time. The crumple zones help since some
of the momentum is firstly absorbed by the front or back of the car
crumpling. It then slows the car down as it crumples so it adds more time
and which reduces the force and therefore less injury, oppose to just
stopping abruptly; this would cause a lot more injury to the driver (since
the force would be stronger). The formula for the change in momentum is
force×time. So if the time increases the force/injury decrease. The size of
the car also matters in a collision as seen in diagram 1; the larger car has
more of the crumple zone and therefore the passengers are more
protected whereas the smaller car does not have much of the crumple
zone (in order to make the car smaller) and the force cannot be decreased
as much so the impact is bigger. In the smaller car the passengers will not
be protected well in a crash with a larger car.
Seat belts are for the safety of the passengers so they do not fly out of the
car in a crash. As mentioned in the previous paragraph that in a crash
situation the car and passengers will want to still keep moving because of
Newton’ s first law. The driver however is not part of the car and even
when the car decelerates the passengers will still keep moving at the
speed the car had been going before the deceleration. The seatbelt
however makes the passengers relatively part of the car which means that
when the car decelerates so will the passengers. The material seatbelts
are made of is flexible and is designed to stretch slightly. But the
mechanics behind them are designed so that they have a bit of give and
they do not injure the passengers but also make sure that the passengers
stay in place. So the time to reduce the momentum is greater.

Air Bags act as cushions so the driver does not hurt his head or any other
part of the body if the car crashes or is hit and decelerates suddenly. Even
with the crumple zones and seat belts the stop is still going to be sudden
and mainly unexpected for the passengers. The airbag system detects a
sudden change in the movement of the car and detectors will make the
airbags then inflate. This process must be very fast which is why a
chemical reaction takes place between sodium azide and potassium
nitrate which turns into nitrogen gas and inflates the airbags quickly
enough. Approximately 45 milliseconds after the sensor detected the
change in movement the airbags are fully inflated.² Newton’s 3rd law is
that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, which means
if the car crashes and stops that would be the opposite and equal reaction
on the car, however the passengers are going to continue moving until an
opposite and equal reaction acts on their movement and brings them into
equilibrium. The seatbelt stops most of their weight from moving out of
the car however having knowledge of this in physics helped us design the
airbag which if they keep moving will slow down their motion.

Benefits/ limitations:
Physics addresses problems concerning car feature safety and helps
explain why things work the way they do. For example when a car crashes
at a high speed the car would somehow be damaged and with the
knowledge of physics the crumple zones where developed so the car gets
completely wrecked while the passengers are safe. So physics made cars
specifically have zones that would crumple on purpose to make the crash
more safe. Also the seatbelts and airbags keep the passengers safe with
the knowledge of physics. This is an example of the benefits when physics
is applied to car safety. However there are also limitations in physics
making accidents safer. Physics does not make the driving safe it only
helps incase of an accident. So the drivers of vehicles have to be careful
not to cause accidents in the first place. Also as cars develop and get
faster the risk if accidents increase and the safety features also have to
improve.

Physics has helped the society because now less people are getting
injured and killed due to car accidents, although there still are many
deaths, the number has probably been reduced. Physics in car safety
features does not only interact with social factors is also has effect on the
economic and ethical factors. The economic factors because by having
safety features in cars like the crumple zones and special air bags,
including more airbags in various areas like the steering wheel but also at
the sides (the doors) the price of the car increases. People that can only
afford the cheaper cars will probably have more risk in getting injured
when in an accident because the seatbelts, crumple zones, and air bags in
their car will not be as developed and technologically advanced as ones
perhaps in a more expensive car.

Physics has definitely improved car safety since in 1985 there where were
3,774 deaths and 179,704 injuries whereas in 2004, 2,429 deaths and
148,865 injuries occurred.8 With the help of physics crumple zones have
developed and seatbelts and airbags have improved over the years. But
the safety of cars does not completely relay only on the physics. The
safety of cars is linked to the health and social education area of
interaction because the car features protect human lives and help reduce
the injuries.

Diagrams:

1)

Bibliography

1) "Road traffic injuries." Http://www.who.int. WHO, 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.

<http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_traffic/en/>.
2) Physics Of car Safety. David Kossowsky, 2005. Web. 15 Nov. 2009.
<http://www.odec.ca/projects/2005/koss5d0/public_html/>.
3) "Use of the Airbag." Physics and Car Safety. Web. 15 Nov. 2009.
<http://tristanmac.tripod.com/index.html>. <http://trismac.tripod.com/id8.html>
<http://tristanmac.tripod.com/id18.html>
4) "Newton’s 3rd Law and Car Safety." Http://answers.yahoo.com. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
<http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090930130116AAfuHIB>.
5) "Car Safety." Http://www.exampleessays.com. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
<http://www.exampleessays.com/viewpaper/73801.html>.
6) "Modern Car Safety Devices." Http://www.exampleessays.com. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
<http://www.exampleessays.com/viewpaper/32214.html>.
7) "Wearing Your Seatbelt." Http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/hframe.html. Web.
15 Nov. 2009. <http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/seatb2.html>. ?
 8) "Statistics of Automobile Collisions." Http://tristanmac.tripod.com. Web. 15 Nov. 2009.
<http://tristanmac.tripod.com/id18.html>.

Pictures:
1)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_orkXxp0bhEA/ShhznAiaagI/AAAAAAAASo8/ZPfau
HZ-coU/s400/090523-smart-crash-test3.jpg