Does it take more force to stop a moving truck or a moving car?

Answer 1

It is mainly due to the difference in the mass. Cycle has lesser mass compared to that of car. Hence momentum would be more for car as momentum p = m v. Rate of change of momentum is proportional to the force. So greater force will be required in case of stopping a car compared to stopping a cycle in the same interval of time moving with the same speed

Answer 2

The speeds of the two trucks are the same, but the lighter one has a lower inertia (or lower inertial moment). The heavier truck has a greater momentum, which is a product of its mass and its velocity (which is just speed with a direction assigned to it). The equation looks like this: P=mv. Momentum is a physical quantity, and it is conserved. In changing the velocity of anything moving, the more mass something has, the more force it will take to change its velocity a given amount. Though both trucks are moving at the same speed, the heavier one will be harder to stop. As the more lightly loaded truck has a lower momentum, it will take less force to stop it. It's just that simple.

Answer 3

The truck has more mass and thus has more momentum. The amount of momentum that an object has depends on two physical quantities: the mass and the velocity of the moving object in the frame of reference. This can be seen through the following equation:

Momentum = (Mass) x (Velocity)

This is often shown in physics textbooks as P = mv where where P is the momentum, m is the mass and v is the velocity.

Answer 4

Let's see a numeric example. 1000 kg. x 20 m/sec, or 2000 kg. x 10 m/sec. The momentum - product of mass times velocity - is the same in both cases.

The kinetic energy is (1/2) (mass) (velocity squared); in the first case, that would be 200,000 J, in the second case, 100,000 J.

So, the light truck has more energy (and requires more work to stop), because it moves faster - and because energy is proportional to the square of the speed.

Answer 5

It depends on a multitude of factors.

The truck has more mass than the car, so if they were traveling at the same speed, it would have more momentum, and therefore take more force to stop the truck within in the time it would take to stop the car. But if the car was traveling at a significantly higher rate of speed than the truck, it would take more force to stop the car, within that time period, than it would the truck. It would also be possible to get the car and the truck moving at different speeds, where it would take the same amount of force to stop them at the same time.

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The force required to stop the moving object has nothing to do with its speed.

In fact, if you don't mind our being technically precise, there's no such thing as

the amount of force required to stop an object.

Any force, no matter how large or small, applied opposite to the direction in which the object is moving, will eventually bring the object to rest. Of course, you have to be aware and make allowance for a few laws of Physics:

-- Larger forces will get the job done sooner.

-- Smaller forces will take more time to do it.

-- Whatever the force is, it'll take longer to stop an object with more kinetic energy.

-- Whatever the force is, it'll stop an object with less kinetic energy sooner.

-- The object's kinetic energy depends on its mass and speed.

Answer 6

Our search for an answer to this question was going slowly,

until we realized that the question's hypothesis is false!

In our experience, it's harder to stop a slow-moving battleship

than it is to stop a much-faster-moving mosquito.