Re: Kyoto, Driving our car
Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Sat, 13 Dec 1997 23:55:28 -0500
Jim McCoy wrote:
>
> Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net> wrote:
> [...]
> >> But as to the car, modern
> >> designs and materials can do far better than Henry Ford had in
> mind
> >> when, in 1926, he said that " A heavy man cannot run as well as a
> >> trim man. You do not need weight for strength"; (S. Abouzar,
> >> personal communication, 3 July 1991).
> >
> >Thats accelerating performance. To disprove the usefulness of this
> >quote, take a 98 lb weakling in the end zone of a football field.
> Take a
> >240 lb linebacker in the opposite end zone. Have them accelerate to
> full
> >speed, and hit each other head on. Who do you think is going to be
> more
> >seriously hurt????
>
> Why don't you try repeating this silly analogy by giving the 98 pound
> weakling a full set of pads and regulation football gear and strip
> the linebacker naked. The weakling will still only weigh around 120
> pounds but will be able to walk away from the collision, unlike the
> linebacker. Or to stretch the silly analogy games even further, why
> not ask yourself how it is that cops can walk around wearing nothing
> but a thin vest of composites and polymers and still live after being
> shot with a piece of lead moving fast enough to have KE that makes
> your linebacker look like a lightweight? Kenetic energy is important
> when trying to figure out who will survive a collision, but you are
> better off betting your life on smart designers and materials
> engineers than high-school physics.
>
> jim
Once again, you are comparing apples and oranges. If such high strength
construction were to be used in vehicles, it would be applied to both
minicars and 1/2 ton pickups, so in my analogy as amended by you, both
the 98lbder and the linebacker would have padding, since they would both
have "current technology". In such a case, who would be hurt more????
Stop avoiding the answer you know I am expecting....
In the case of you cop/kevlar vest vs. bullet: Its easy to stop a
bullet, as its a puny little thing, and the vest does its job not by
being impervious to bullets, but by being impervious enough that they
don't penetrate all the way through by the time the vest has spread ALL
of the bullets kinetic energy across the wearer's entire chest surface.
TO be able to use your analogy, the cop is the 1/2ton truck, and the
bullet is the minicar. Ever look at what happens to a bullet that hits a
vest???? Is it reusable? I didn't think so. Is the cop reusable? Most of
the time. Thanks for the proof....
--
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael Lorrey
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mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering
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How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?