Is it better to hit a telephone or power pole at a high speed (90 mph) than a lower speed (45 mph) because of the following: at 45 mph the car does not have enough energy to shear the pole, but will rather wrap around it, resulting in extreme damage; however, at 90 mph the car will simply shear the pole resulting in far less damage to car and driver.

good question

A guy sheared off a utility pole a couple of blocks from where I used to live. He was killed.

Very unique..... I need someone to bust this myth lol

car vs.power pole= nofun

good question. i think they did this myth but with a speed boat. tori did better replicating it with his own strength than the small scale test.

*check out my myth: arm chop takeoff

If a car hits a pole at 45mph, and does not have the energy to break the pole, how much more energy will it take to break the pole? Basicaly, the pole will remain stationary until enough energy is present to break it. As long as the pole remains stationary, and the vehical keeps moving, the vehical will take damage. If you could hit the pole at 89mph and not break it, but at 90mph it breaks, the vehical will have effectivly taken twice as much damage as it would have at 45mph.

I'm not sure what the right speed is, that's not the point of my question. The speeds are just examples only, don't nitpick. It may be that you have to go faster I don't know, that's why I'm asking the question.

the answer to your question is a definate NO. Yes there is a point at which the car is going to beak the pole but that will not reduce the damage done to the car, or the driver.

Quite true.

Once the car has enough velocity to break the pole you will then have a car with a very large pole laying on top of it. I've seen it.

Lets look at this with a little sense:

If the car does not have enough force to detach the pole from the ground then it imparts all the force of its movement into the pole, and the car sustains the damage that force entails.

If the car *does* have the force to detach the pole from the ground then it imparts that force into the pole and sustains the damage that force entails, then continues on and dissipates whatever force is remaining on some other object. Note that the force required to detach the pole is *more* than was experienced in the first example, so even before the car crashes for a second time it will have sustained more damage!

From a pure force-based perspective it is always better to be moving slowly enough to be stopped by the pole rather than faster.

quote:

Originally posted by h2eddy:
I'm not sure what the right speed is, that's not the point of my question. The speeds are just examples only, don't nitpick. It may be that you have to go faster I don't know, that's why I'm asking the question.

I was not nitpicking, nor was I implying I knew the impact speed the pole would break at. I was telling you that the car would sustain more damage at the higher speed and giving an example of why.

well, if youre talking about the car then hear this "a body at rest will stay at rest unless a greater force acts upon it" therefore a car going at 45 mph will possibly be a force not great enough at will cause damage to the car but 90 mph will be that greater force and cause damage to the weaker force, the power pole.

quote:

Originally posted by barmy_one:
well, if youre talking about the car then hear this "a body at rest will stay at rest unless a greater force acts upon it" therefore a car going at 45 mph will possibly be a force not great enough at will cause damage to the car but 90 mph will be that greater force and cause damage to the weaker force, the power pole.

of course this doesnt mean that both will take extreme damage......

quote:

Originally posted by barmy_one:

quote:

Originally posted by barmy_one:
well, if youre talking about the car then hear this "a body at rest will stay at rest unless a greater force acts upon it" therefore a car going at 45 mph will possibly be a force not great enough at will cause damage to the car but 90 mph will be that greater force and cause damage to the weaker force, the power pole.

of course this doesnt mean that both will take extreme damage......

The pole is not a weaker force just because the car is going faster. The pole will require a certain amount of force to be broken, no matter what hits it, and no matter what the speed of that impact is. The car will take damage until this force is met and the pole is broke.

i think that it would do more damige to the car and driver if you faster they did this myth with a bout and have ou watched alaska speical? they did a mith is it better to speed up whene ou are about to hit a moose or slow down and going faster added lots more damege the goig slow so i think its better to go slow rather the fast

PLz look at my myth its called tickle a fish

I got a good question for Cars and poles. I went to this site called: Will and Guy's Jokes, Short Stories and Funny Pictures. while I was looking around I came across this picture of a car with its front end proped up ontop of a pole that has fallen down. If i could post the pictureon here a would so you could see but i can't.but if your intrested in this ill be more than glad enough to post the link to it.

Just to let you know , the Discovery forums did not want anybody posting Email addresses because they are not responsible if your email gets spammed to death and they like posters .

You can link web pages by using the URL tab on this posting window , just drag the address from your browser on to it.

Photos are fine too , but you need to have your own photo site to link to .