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In 1896 in Waco, William Crush parked two locomotives at opposite ends of a 6.4-Km-longtrack, fired them up, tied throttles open, and theb allowed them to crash head-on at full speed (Fig. 8.1 )in front of 30,000 spectators. Hundreds of people were hurt by flying debris, several were killed. Assuming each locomotive weighed and its acceleration was a constant what was the total kinetic energy of the two locomotives just before the collision? |
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Answer» SOLUTION :(1) We need to find the kinetic energy of each locomotivewith Eq. 8-1, but that means we need each locomotive .s speed just before the collision and its mass. (2) Bacause we can assume each locomotive had constant acceleration we can use the equations in Table 2-1 (Chapter2) to find its speed just before the collision. Calculations: We choose Eq. 2-1 (Chapter 2) because we KNOW values for all the variables except With and (half the initial separation ), this YIELDS We can find the mass of each locomotive by dividing its given weight by G: Now, using Eq. 8-1, we find the total kinetic energy of the two locomotives just before the collision as This collision was like an EXPLODING bomb. |
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