Question

Indycar driver Kenny Bräck survived one of the racing sport's biggest crashes at Texas Motor Speedway in 2003, where he recorded the highest horizontal g-force ever survived by a human being at 214 g (-2100m/s/s) at the Chevy 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, USA, on 12 October 2003. Kenny Bräck has a mass of about 70kg. This means the force acting on Kenny was 70kg x 2100m/s/s = 147,000N! If the crash took 0.05s for this impulse to occur, what was his change in momentum? ​

Answer 1

The change in momentum (impulse) for Kenny Bräck in the described crash is 7,350 kg·m/s, determined by multiplying the force (147,000 N) by the time interval (0.05s).

Step-by-step explanation:

The student asked how to calculate the change in momentum for Indycar driver Kenny Bräck based on the force and duration of the crash he was involved in. The change in momentum, also known as impulse, can be found by multiplying the force acting on an object by the time interval during which the force was applied.

Given that the force was 147,000 N and the time interval was 0.05 s, the impulse is:

Impulse = Force × Time

= 147,000 N × 0.05 s

= 7,350 kg·m/s.

This represents the change in momentum of Kenny Bräck during the crash. High G-force impacts, such as the one survived by Bräck, are not only a testament to human endurance but also to the engineering that goes into safety equipment, enabling such forces to be survivable.