Car wrecks and high school physics

Kevin Day, February 15th, 2008

Did you realize that increasing your driving speed from 60 mph to 80 mph nearly doubles your kinetic energy? I never thought about it, but it’s simple KE = 1/2 mv^2.

Try doing billiard ball collision problems with double the energy and see how they go. Not that car accidents are elastic collisions, but that energy has to go somewhere.