8 ms·
As anyone who has hit a deer in their car can tell you, that’s not how momentum works.
by oivey 5y ago
As anyone who has hit a deer in their car can tell you, that’s not how momentum works.
- CalChris 5y agoA deer weighs maybe pounds 100 lbs. A car weighs maybe 3000 lbs for a 30 to 1 ratio. That sub weighs 1000 times more than a container. That is how momentum works.
- jacquesm 5y agoThat all depends on the cross section of the impact area. If you'd hit the container in a corner (extremely unlucky) then that would be highly annoying. But subs are made to survive pretty strong impacts, including using the conning tower to ram through ice layers. They're immensely strong compared to regular vessels due to the kind of forces they are exposed to when diving deep.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoTotal ratio is only relevant if you want to know how much the sub/car slowed down. Kinetic energy is more relevant if you want to know the physical damage sustained. If you shoot a bullet at a tall wall and a shorter wall, the bullet hole will be the same. Alternatively, a deer will still ruin the front end of a car with 1000X the mass. The energy of the impact will be 1/2mdeltaV^2 either way.
- oivey 5y agoIf you hit a 10 ton object and _any_ of the collision is inelastic, that is a tremendous amount of momentum to dissipate. It might not change the speed of the sub much, but it could still cause a lot of damage to the hull which could then injure sailors inside.
- Jensson 5y agoWouldn't the submarine sink if the hull was so deformed that it damaged 10 sailors?
- TeMPOraL 5y agoNot if the majority of the damage to the sailors came from them being unexpectedly bounced around the corridors. If they weren't expecting it, they weren't strapped in or otherwise secured.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- justinator 5y agoDepends on the deer. Mule Deer here that you can find the front yard of your house can be 200-300lbs. And depends on what you mean by, "deer". Are you think about reindeer? Elk? MOOSE? Hitting a moose is gunna be a bad day.
- short12 5y agoWhy would someone refer to a moose or an elk as a deer?
- justinator 5y agoDeer, Elk, and Moose are all part of the Cervid or deer family. Also, in various parts of the world, the names are commonly used for different specific animals, which can be confusing. What's called a Moose in say, Sweden is called an Elk in Britain. But what we call elk in the US are a different species entirely. Elk in the US are another name for the red deer species, which was once considered merely a subspecies.
- throwaway946513 5y agoNot sure about what deer you've been around - but the deer family have hit definitely weighed about two or three times that. Saying I've remembered since I started driving: If it's a deer, hit it, better than hitting a tree. If it's a moose, hit the tree, better than hitting the moose.
- latchkey 5y agoI recently hit a deer while going about 60-65mph in a fairly heavy campervan (3 100amp AGM batteries + ~30 gallons of water storage and other gear). It did $10k worth of damage to my front end. Deer ended up 150-200 feet away in a ditch. I barely felt it.
- oivey 5y agoYeah, and if the deer went through your windshield you likely would have been seriously injured. The relative size of the object to the vehicle doesn’t have to be large to cause significant damage or injuries. Just because you are big doesn’t make you invulnerable.
- costigan 5y agoYou're certainly right but still missing the point. The 10 injuries were most likely not due to a vulnerable part of the sub. They were likely due to a sudden change in the sub's motion, which wouldn't have occurred had they hit a container.
- bumby 5y agoThere a reason why vehicle crash testing is done with a vehicle of comparable weight. If the tests of a Mini Cooper were done with your camper van, there's no way they would get a reasonable safety rating.