In: Physics
A car collides with a truck. The force exerted by the truck on the car is
A) | less than the force exerted by the car on the truck |
B) greater than the force exerted by the car on the truck |
C) the same as the force exerted by the car on the truck |
D) not necessarily related to the force exerted by the car on the truck. |
The two vehicles experience a force of the same magnitude due to Newton's third law:
If object A exerts a force FAB on object B, then object B will exert a fore FBA on object A and
FBA=−FAB
However, what you're probably thinking about is that motion of the car is more drastically affected by the collision. This can be explained by Newton's second law. Let's say the truck has mass M and the car has mass m. If the magnitude of the force that both vehicles experience is F, then the magnitudes of their respective accelerations are
atruck=F/M, acar=F/m
and combining these we get
atruck/acar=m/M
So if the mass of the car is a lot less than the mass of the truck, then the acceleration of the truck is much smaller than the acceleration of the car, and if you were to watch the collision, the truck would pretty much seem like it's motion was unaffected, but the car's motion will change quite a bit.so option c is correct