I was just wondering... I believe that if a car travelling 50 miles per hour crashes into a wall, the result should be the same as crashing to another car also travelling 50 miles per hour (but in the other direction of course)
Is this true? Why is that?
Answer
This is true if the wall is so strong that it does not move and is not damaged in the course of the crash, so this can be only approximately true. So why is this (approximately) true? Because, on the one hand, the consequences of a crash are determined by the accelerations in the course of the crash, on the other hand, due to the symmetry, accelerations will be approximately the same in the crash of two identical vehicles as in a crash of a vehicle against a very strong wall (in both cases, no parts of the first vehicle can travel beyond the plane of symmetry of the two vehicles or beyond the nearest surface of the wall). However, some differences are still possible, as parts of the vehicle can rebound in a different way in these two cases (the collision can be (in)elastic to a different extent in these two cases).
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