Accord escribió:Si pesa los 800g que dicen, asumiendo que Massa fuera a unos 260 km/h, la energía del impacto es la de un balazo de AK 47, por dicha un resorte no es tan puntiagudo como una bala, pero se da uno una idea...
Bueno parece que exageré, es un poco menos que un AK-47, interesante este
artículo, un extracto:
- 100 mph fastball from Nolan Ryan: 145 joules
- Barry Bonds’ swing (33 oz. bat at 70 mph): 458 joules
- 9mm handgun: 513 joules
- .44 Magnum handgun: 1,510 joules
- The spring that hit Massa (800 grams at 160 mph): 2,046 joules
- AK-47 (7.62mm round): 2,599 joules
- 12 gauge shotgun slug: 3,580 joules
- The wheel that killed Henry Surtees (an estimated 12 kg at 120 mph): 17,267 joules
Before we talk about those figures, it’s worth remembering that the Massa and Surtees accidents were real-world situations, and as such, the numbers above may be imprecise. Massa was moving at 160 mph, but if the spring was traveling at high speed in the same direction as his Ferrari, or if it ricocheted off of his car before striking him, the estimate of 2,046 joules will be too high. If, for instance, we change the spring’s collision speed to 120 mph, its kinetic energy drops about 44% to a still-frightening 1,151 joules. The same caveats apply to the figures on Henry Surtees’ accident. Please suggest any adjustments in the comments.
With that in mind, let’s consider the baseball examples. Bullets focus their energy on a tiny area, which is why they would penetrate something like a driver’s helmet. The contact patch of a baseball or a bat, by contrast, would be close to that of a coil spring, and that makes for some shocking comparisons.
By the numbers above, Massa would have been 14 times better off being hit by Nolan Ryan fastball. He would have been four times better off letting Barry Bonds take a full-force swing at his head. For that matter, in terms of sheer energy, he’d have been better off letting Barry Bonds hit him in the head at the same instant that someone shot him point-blank with Dirty Harry’s gun.
It’s simply incredible that a helmet can turn that into a survivable injury, but the massive energy of Henry Surtees’ accident — nearly five times that of a 12 gauge shotgun slug and more than eight times worse than the blow to Massa’s head — reminds us that there’s a limit to the protection that one or two inches of padding can provide. Being hit in the head with a wheel moving at race speeds is easily deadly, helmet or no helmet.
