Biology Forums - Study Force

Situation
According to safety standard for air bags, the maximum acceleration during a car crash should not exceed 60 g and should last for no more than 36 ms.

Questions
A. In such a case, what force does the air bag exert on a 81.0kg person? Start with a free-body diagram.

Express the force in part (A) in terms of the person's weight.

I am normally good at math, but physics I am not integrating easy what so ever.  I really want to understand and be efficient at diagrams.

So I am trying to draw.  I have an 81 kg person with the force of the airbag going in the negative x direction.  In the positive x i have 60g acceleration.  Do i take the 36ms times the 60 g to get velocity?  But F=MA.  So doing that gives me m/s and not m/s^2 which i need.  TIA

Post Merge: 10 years ago

Ok actually first part is easy.  I just multiply 9.81m/s^2 x 60 x 81kg and i get 4.76 x 10^4

But how do i approach the 2nd part of the question?

study study study!

Maybe you should be doing the same then.

Use the equation: F= MA

Solve:

60g = (60)(9.81)= 588.6 N

Then, F=(588.6)(72)

F= 42379.2 N, but if you're using Mastering Physics, type it in as 4.23x10^4 N.