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How much Force was I hit with?
A 220lb awning measuring 61" x 54" x 6" failed , slid out from house and in a split second, came straight down and fell 25".( I was doing my best to back away from it ), as it hit my head, shoudler ,and arm, I was knocked unconscience as I hit the ground. I'm healing. Is my question right? or should I ask how many pounds of pressure hit me?
6 Answers
- oldprofLv 79 years agoFavorite Answer
Shee there's not enough info. The issue is where the weight is distributed along the dimensions of the awning and which part of the awning hit you. For example, if the major strength member is the back frame, then that's probably where a large portion of the 220 lb is located, leaving the front frame considerably lighter. And as you might guess, if the lighter part fell two feet and hit, that would have less impact force than if the heavier back frame fell that two feet and hit you.
In cases like this, analysts typically take the worst case scenario. So I'll assume 2/3 of the weight, or about 140 lbs is in the heavier frame and that's what landed on you. So the total impact is I = W + F = 140 + (140/32)*sqrt(2*32*2)/.1 = 634.9747468 = 635 lbs of force. W = 140 lbs the weight of the heavy frame and F = (W/g)V/T is the impact force where V = sqrt(2gH) is the impact speed, T is the impact interval assumed to be .1 seconds, and H = 2 ft the drop height to your noggen.
The pressure on you would simply be I, the impact total, divided by the area of the impact contact (i.e., head, shoulder, and arm).
NOTE: This is a ballpark estimate, but as we have nothing specific about the weight distribution and such, a ballpark estimate will have to do.
- 9 years ago
I'm assuming you don't know your body's acceleration when it hit you. When you don't know that, and velocity comes into play, you need to look at it in regards to momentum. Even with this, it would be hard, because you would need to know how long the impact lasted (probably a fraction of a second but the slightest offset in accuracy with this measurement can make a big difference with this kind of calculation). We could take the equation p=(F)(t). Let "p" be impulse (change in momentum). F is force, and t is time of impact. Momentum=mv=(mass)(velocity). So assuming all of the momentum was transfered to you when the awning hit you (your body completely stopped its vertical velocity), the impulse=initial momentum. Since you know what happened better than I do, I'll just give you an equation where you can plug in variables that I couldn't estimate or come up with in any way. You want to know force, so F=p/t. Substituting in the definition of momentum, F=mv/t (you might notice that v really should be delta v, but there's no delta symbol on the keyboard. (Delta v)/t is actually acceleration, giving F=ma - the actual definition of force). The velocity of the awning at the time it hit you (if it fell 25 inches) should have been about 3.5 meters/second (I'm converting everything to SI units so I can get force in Newtons). 220 lbs is 100 kilograms. So your equation is F=350/t. Average collision times can be anywhere between .1 and .5 seconds. As you can see from the equation, the shorter the time of impact, the greater the force. You decide what you think the time of impact was. But another thing that really matters here is how spread out over your body the impact was. From what you said, it sounds like it was over a pretty spread out area, which is good. If your head took the entire impact, it would have been a lot worse. The total force on your body doesn't change with how spread out the impact was, but the damages change. So the force on your body could have been anywhere between 700 newtons and 3500 newtons. These are both pretty significant, but the equation is most likely an overestimate. I'm assuming your body didn't absorb the momentum even close to entirely (the awning probably still had some downward vertical velocity after hitting you). But this is as good of an estimate as I can give. Interesting physics problem though.
- goodlettLv 45 years ago
Hitting is obviously a crime, so evidently until the hit was once both agreed to, or was once facet of a game in which the members concerned knew that they could most probably be hit, I'd be very specified in declaring that a "battery" happened. Let's face it the unstoppable drive should not be so reckless to be in occasions in which others, such because the un-movable item could be. Since they're unstoppable, they will have to obviously be held responsible for inflicting damage or harm to anything they occur to crash into. I imply fairly, if you're going to be unstoppable, a minimum of be unstoppable in which no person else goes to hit!! Since the unstoppable drive is aware of or will have to recognise, or is willfully ignorant in their situations, I suppose that they will have to be charged with a legal or a minimum of a 1st measure misdemeanor.
- Anonymous7 years ago
Hi it's me the one who was talking about the guy hitting on me... Well I said that I need to keep him chasing me, well I kinda started chasing him back, and he backed off so how could I get him to start chasing me again? Thanks
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