I’m kinda confused, obviously it’s because there is more force involved in the collision compared to a slow speed collision, but why? It’s just the way the universe works, or what?
In: Physics
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can just be transformed into different forms. This is just a fundamental way the universe works.
If an object moves fast, someone must have expended energy to get it that fast. This energy (apart from “losses” like friction that were mostly transformed into heat) now resides in the moving object, called kinetic energy. Kinetic energy scales with the square of the velocity, so something moving twice as fast has four times the energy.
If a moving object crashes into something, that kinetic energy has to go somewhere. Some will be transferred to the hit object, causing it to move, but some will be used to cause deformation (and the sound of the crash. Sound is also energy). The more kinetic energy enters the crash, the more deformation happens.
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