I’m not a science-y person, but I love sci-fi. In a novel I read near a decade ago (Larry Niven’s Known Space series), he mentions occasionally kinetic weapons. I’ve seen this online as well with tungsten-based projectiles being discussed. So my question is how does mass and velocity affect the amount of damage? If I had a nickel-sized object, how fast would it need to go to cause city-wide devastation (would it be possible or would the damage output be capped based on either size or velocity)? Conversely, If I launched something at the speed of sound, would the damage output be the same if it were different-sized objects?
In: 5
The amount of damage varies if I apply less or more force, the Force in physics is calculated with F=ma, Force=mass times acceleration, acceleration is not technically the speed of the object but in real life the two things are usually connected so yeah, speed is usually how hard you threw the object, the more force you use to kick a ball the faster it goes, so when it impacts on something all the force goes from the movement of the ball to the thing that it hit. Mass is a little bit more complex: you know that two objects, even if they have different weights, will fall at the same speed ? That’s because the gravity generated by earth “manifests” as an acceleration on your body that is equal for everyone, but when you touch the ground that’s when all of that acceleration becomes a Force and the more you weight the more you’re going to damage the ground.
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