Common thoughts about force involved in Motor Vehicle Accidents

A while back I received a rude response to my, “What happens in a car accident,” article. I was really surprised by the comment of the reader so I decided to do a little experiment and also poll a greater population to get an understanding of general impressions of what happens when a car strikes an object. Before I get to the experiment results and the pole results I will quote a class on Motor Vehicle accident:
“The acceleration-deceleration forces which cause whiplash injury are sufficient to permanently disable an individual. Even in a low speed rear impact collision of 8 mph, the head moves roughly 18 inches, at a force as great as 7 G’s in less than a quarter of a second. To put this into perspective, the Discovery space shuttle is only built to withstand a maximum of 3 G’s.”
“Newton's first law states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
If an object is in motion with an eastward velocity of 5 meters per second, it will continue in this same state of motion (5 m/s, East). If in motion with a leftward velocity of 2 m/s, it will continue in this same state of motion (2 m/s, left). The state of motion of an object is maintained as long as the object is not acted upon by an unbalanced force. All objects resist changes in their state of motion.
Inertia (resisting changes in the state of motion) occurs in an automobile while it is braking to a stop. The force of the road on the locked wheels provides the unbalanced force to change the car's state of motion, however there is no unbalanced force to change the passenger’s own state of motion. Therefore, the passenger continues in motion, sliding forward along their seat. A person in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction ... unless acted upon by the unbalanced force of a seat belt. The seat belt provides the unbalanced force which brings the occupant of a vehicle from a state of motion to a state of rest. “
“Force is a quantity which is measured using a standard metric unit known as the Newton. One Newton is the amount of force required to give a 1-kg mass an acceleration of 1 m/s2. A Newton is abbreviated by an "N."
Force is a vector quantity. A vector quantity is a quantity which has both magnitude and direction. To describe the force acting upon an object, you must describe both its magnitude (size) and its direction. Thus, 10 Newtons is not a full description of the force acting upon an object. In contrast, 10 Newtons, downwards is a complete description of the force acting upon an object; both the magnitude (10 Newtons) and the direction (downwards) are given.”
“The mass of an object (measured in kg) will be the same no matter where in the universe that object is located. Mass is never altered by location, the pull of gravity, speed or even the existence of other forces. For example, a 2-kg object will have a mass of 2 kg whether it is located on Earth, or the moon.
The weight of an object (measured in Newtons) will vary according to where in the universe the object is. Weight depends upon which planet is exerting the force and the distance the object is from the planet. Weight, being equivalent to the force of gravity, is dependent upon the value of g (acceleration of gravity). On Earth's surface, g is 9.8 m/s2 (often approximated to 10 m/s2). On the moon's surface, g is 1.7 m/s2. The g value is inversely proportional to the distance from the center of the planet. So if g were measured at a distance of 400 kilometers above the earth's surface, you would find the value of g to be less than 9.8 m/s2.”2

“Newton's second law of motion pertains to the behavior of objects when all existing forces are not balanced. The second law states that the acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables – the net force acting upon the object and the mass of the object. The acceleration of an object depends directly upon the net force acting upon the object, and inversely upon the mass of the object. As the net force increases, so will the object's acceleration. However, as the mass of the object increases, its acceleration will decrease.”

“A force is a push or a pull upon an object which results from its interaction with another object. According to Newton, whenever objects A and B interact with each other, they exert forces upon each other. When you sit in your chair, your body exerts a downward force on the chair and the chair exerts an upward force on your body. There are two forces resulting from this interaction — a force on the chair and a force on your body. These two forces are called action and reaction forces.
Newton's third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The statement means that in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. The size of the force on the first object equals the size of the force on the second object. The direction of the force on the first object is opposite to the direction of the force on the second object. Forces always come in pairs – equal and opposite action-reaction force pairs. An example of this would be force generated by the wheels of a car. An automobile is equipped with wheels that spin backwards. As the wheels spin backwards, they push the road backwards. In turn, the road reacts by pushing the wheels forward. The size of the force on the road equals the size of the force on the wheels (or automobile); the direction of the force on the road (backwards) is opposite to the direction of the force on the wheels (forwards). For every action, there is an equal (in size) and opposite (in direction) reaction. Action-reaction force pairs make it possible for automobiles to move.”

Now the experiment I did was as follows: I took a 2x4 and a ¾” Plywood that measured 2 feet by 2 feet. I placed the board on a 30 degree angle and stood on it with my 220 pound body and then I bounced on the board. I then took and did the same thing to the piece of plywood. Then I took duplicate boards and leaned them at a 30 degree angle against the house and pulled my van up to the boards. When I put the van into drive the force of the van cracked the boards. My weight and bouncing alone was not sufficient to crack the boards before.
The poling of the people went as follows: I asked twenty four people one at a time to give me their opinion about two scenarios I would present. I asked twelve females and twelve males. Out of that population three were engineers, one was an ex law enforcement officer, one was a lawyer, the remaining of the group had at least one year of college. Out of that group the engineers and the ex law enforcement officer answered the same. The two scenarios were as follows:
Two identical individuals were standing beside each other on a road, one in the right lane and the other in the left lane. Ten feet from them was a Honda civic in the right lane and a 220 pound linebacker in the left lane. The Honda civic and the linebacker started towards the two individuals standing in the road. The Honda was traveling 5 miles per hour and the linebacker was traveling 14 miles per hour. Which individual sustained the most amount of damage if they were hit in the same place on their body? The engineers and officer familiar with physics answered that the person hit by the Honda civic would sustain more damage because the force was greater from the Honda civic. That might sound weird but just recently I have a patient who told me about getting hit over twenty years ago in a parking lot. He was a pedestrian and the car that hit him was traveling about 5 miles per hour in the parking lot. He can still recall the thud he felt and that he came right out of his shoes. He says he still hurts from that hit.
The second scenario was in relationship to momentum and again only the individuals familiar with physics came up with the same answer. The poling population would need to be expanded but the preliminary response shows me that the general population can pass some wrong judgments because the understanding of physics is less. Maybe that is the way several things are. We judge harder the things we do not fully understand, and the more knowledge we obtain might cause us to judge less harshly.

Where do we need to exert Energy?

We are in an energy crisis. I'm not talking about what you may think when I mention energy crisis. I'm talking about our personal energy crisis in our own bodies. What I mean is this: When we go through the process of thinking, our nerve cells in our brain form neurochemicals called neurotransmitters. These are formed from the nerve cells and passed to other nerve cells in order to pass information from one cell to the other. What I'm saying is that when we go through the process of thinking, every thought is converted to a chemical signal that passes from one nerve cell to other nerve cells. Every chemical formed has a molecular make-up, and a certain charge to it. When I say charge, I am talking about the positive or negative charges that come from the atoms that make the molecules that are the chemicals. When I ask the question of what else in our world has positive and negative charges, most people think of batteries and magnets. When we have thoughts, we create molecules that have positive and negative poles. In short we create magnets inside of us. If our thought process is really efficient, we can cause physical changes in our body. We can stimulate the production of chemicals for healing, for breathing faster or slower, for increasing or lowering our heart rate and for changing our response to the environment. We can cause our whole body to become a giant magnet. I do not assume to know how far away our body magnet can attract things but our own body's physiology will change. For example, if I thought about crime in the city and how much I wanted to stop crime, I would make lots of chemical neurotransmitters relating to crime. Even though I wanted to stop crime, I could be attracting more crime to me, because I spent a lot of time making crime neurochemicals. If I really wanted to stop crime I would need to think about safe practices and security, and a peacefull society. I would form safe practice and secure neurochemicals. This would attract more safe and secure things toward me. I know this sounds juvenile, however this is something worth our time. If I really want to change health care than I must spend my energy thinking about an ideal health care system. I can't spend so much of my energy fighting against a health care system I do not want, because most likely I will get it. I must put forth a quality plan and put my energy behind it. If I want a different candidate for President, Governor, or Mayer I need to support the different candidate instead of fighting against the candidate I don't want. There is something very interesting about the human body. This is that the human body does not contain nerves that register negative signals. In other words: we do not have a "Not" nerve. We feel cold because there is no heat signals, and we see black because there are no color or light signals. Notice what happens when we tell ourselves or others "not" to do something. Isn't it the first response to do what we are "not" supposed to do. We have better effects when we have ourselves or others "do" something other than what we do not want to do. We have so much potential for good in our world but often times resort to making time for the bad. I like the Beatles song -"Imagine," I think we should imagine a world like we want and not one that we do not want.

Sports for Children

(Re-write from article on Dr. Godard's older web site)
Recently my wife and I had another little baby. Combined with seeing all the young people who go through the doors of our clinic, I am often reminded of the special needs of young children. The physical needs of our young people are quite different than our own. First of all, their body proportions are different from ours. Compared to an adult, a young person's head is large relative to the size of his body. Relative to the rest of the body measurements, the shoulder girdle is smaller, the hips are thin and narrow, and the abdominal cavity is larger. Inside the body, the nervous system is still maturing. The bone structure by weight is about one-quarter cartilage to three-quarters hard bone, which is much lighter and less dense than adult bone structure. When a young person exercises, there are different dynamics at work on his body than there would be for an adult. The weight bearing is slightly forward as compared to an adult. To compensate for that, the child has the tendency to arch the low back more. If we had children perform the same exercises as adults do, we would damage their low backs, shins, knees, and necks. The limberness in a child is proportional to the amount of calcium deposited in his or her bones, muscles, and connective tissues. On average, bones do not completely harden until around twenty-five years of age. It is a mistake to subject young people to weight-lifting exercises requiring power-lifting techniques much before the age of seventeen. The extra weight on the growth plates cause the plates to die, preventing the bone from achieving its potential height. Some exercises better suited for young people are those involving the pushing and pulling of their own weight. For example: push-ups, pull-ups, dips, one-leg lunges, squats without weight, leg press with body-weight, and running stairs. If the child has scoliosis, a modified weight lifting routine can be started to help the spinal muscles pull evenly.
Certain sports have been shown to be harder on young children. Soccer and basketball tend to stress young legs, specifically the tendon connection just below the knee. A child unconditioned to large amounts of activity starting soccer or basketball at ten to twelve years of age can develop knee pain that will last even at rest. Smaller children starting an intense soccer program at five to eight years old can damage the leg's growth centers. The trick is not to be a fanatic about sports for these young people. They should be learning the fundamentals of the sport and mild competition. Some recommended sports for young kids are swimming, football, and playing in the playground. Believe it or not, for a five to eight year-olds, football is very safe due to the amount of padding and the low demand for constant running. When the child's physical structure is in line, he or she will perform at higher levels. I have evaluated several young people's physical alignment and helped with sports performance through chiropractic adjustments. Above all else, if the child has fun at the sport and is learning its fundamentals, then the child will have a great future in that sport they choose.