eli5: What is the difference in force when two individuals are going at an equal speed and collide vs one individual going at that same speed and colliding with a non moving individual?

Question

eli5: What is the difference in force when two individuals are going at an equal speed and collide vs one individual going at that same speed and colliding with a non moving individual?

In: 0

Answer 1

Short version. If you have a car driving 30mph going into a wall the impact will have a certain amount of energy.

If you have 2 cars going head on 30mph then the collision would release exact same amount of the energy as a car hitting the wall at 60mph. That’s because 60mph is the relative speed between the cars.