StarTalk Radio - Hard Hits

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

How much force is in a car crash? How much energy is behind a punch? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice investigate hard hits from boxing, football, rugby, soccer, NASCAR, and more. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/hard-hits/ Image Credit: Palmount45 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. And in this installment, we're going to focus on the physics of hard hits in contact sports, in bats and sticks and balls and crashes on the racetrack. And I've got with me, as always, Chuck. Nice, Chuck. Hey, what's happening? All right.

Chuck, a professional stand-up comedian, but also a sports enthusiast. But that's still not good enough to have an astrophysicist and a sports enthusiast comic. We need an actual athlete. And for that, we have Gary O'Reilly. Gary. Hey, Neil. Hi, Chuck. So a former athlete. Yes, past tense. But a current sports fan.

I'm a current sports fan. Isn't being an athlete like being the president? Once you're a pro athlete, you're always an athlete for the rest of your life. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Yeah, okay. I get a feeling the sand is

definitely going to the bottom of the glass right now. So Gary, a professional soccer player in your day, we're delighted to have you. And you're over from the UK, so that accounts for your bit of an accent there. Yes, just a touch. But of course to...

And having more class. More class. Oh, gosh. No, we're just completely benchmarked by Masterpiece Theatre, most of us growing up. That was, you know, the British accent that we heard.

Alistair Cook. Yes. Oh, Alistair Cook's a national treasure. He's a bit like Sir David Attenborough. Sure. Who is the other Brit that every single American knows from growing up. Here's what I'm saying.

I finally learned that you guys have bad talking people too the first time I heard the Beatles speak. What's wrong with you, Neil? What's wrong? What do you think? Don't like our accents? What's wrong with you, Neil? What's wrong? What do you think I think? Don't look at my accent. What's your problem?

You don't go to Birmingham and find out people talk like this, and you won't get on top. Go back to this recording studio. Sing me a song. Don't talk to me. Sing me a song, yeah. I know. We're a quaint little island with weird dialects. For such a small little place,

we have the most ridiculous amount of dialects. All right. So, segment one, let's call this body check. Now, we didn't bring in, other than you, Gary, we didn't bring in fully pummeled athletes to comment on what it feels like to be the victim of the physics of a crash or a hit or an encounter. So, it's just me in this episode

tapping my physics background. I have a degree in physics, to explore this. So I'll do my best. But do we have three segments worth if it's just me talking? Oh, yeah. I mean, if you think about it,

if Biden and Trump can make an 11-minute conversation last 90 minutes. We can do this. We've got three sections and then some. Yep, there you go. Okay. All right.

So let's try this. So let's talk about boxing. Yes. Okay. And there's all this talk about what effect a different kind of punch would have on the person who gets hit. All right. And is it a hit to the head or to the midsection or to the, is it an uppercut? Is it a jab?

You know, so there's a whole sort of range of ways to think about that. And I can tell you there's one thing that matters most in all of this, and that's how fast is your hand moving? Oh. Period. That's it. How fast is your hand moving? And I can tell you a couple of things.

You know, you ever see the bar room fights in movies in the Old West? Yeah, of course. Where a person sort of reaches back, and then they send their fist forward, and they make contact right at the extension of their arm. Right. You ever notice that? Mm-hmm. Okay? That is the least effective punch you could possibly land.

All right? So if you take strobe photos of your hand moving forward, when you try to punch as fast as you can, and when you do that, what you want is to hit someone. And I hate even speaking this way because it's about violence. But let me just explain the physics of it. So take equal strobe images of your fist going forward. Find the spot where your hand moved the most between strobe images. That's when your hand is moving the fastest. And that is never at the end of your punch because your hand is slowing down there. Otherwise, it would detach and keep going. It has to slow down because it eventually hits zero. So your hand is moving at its fastest somewhere in the middle of that punch.

So all of the bar room things where they hit at the outer limits, they're not being affected. That's why the guy gets up and keeps fighting. Yeah, exactly. That's why he has to pick up a whiskey bottle and then hit him over the head with it. Right, right. Because his punches are ineffective. Thank you, Chuck, for that ineffective. This goes back to a couple of things. Bruce Lee, when he stands directly in front of somebody and just punches them. You remember that bit, Chuck? That's called the

two-inch punch. Yeah. I call it theater, but that's fine. Oh! And the other thing is... Oh my god! You are not telling me that Bruce Lee is scamming me. He's dead, so I feel pretty safe. I wouldn't say that about Mike Tyson because he's alive.

Yeah. Come find your ass, right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, the thing is, I will eat your children. Oh. Delightful. I'm serious. That's a direct quote from Mike Tyson.

Go to church. No, that's a direct quote from Mike Tyson. Go to church. No, that's a direct quote from Mike Tyson. No, let me tell you something. Okay? I will eat your children. Okay? That's what I will do. All right?

I will put some salt on them. I don't believe that. He said that. I don't want to believe it. He said, I will eat your children. I don't want to believe it. Okay. All right.

So the idea, Neil, Well, eat your children. I don't want to believe it. Okay. All right. So the idea, Neil, is to punch a point beyond the person. That way you're traveling. You're still traveling through their head. Okay.

So if you're not comfortable with physics or don't know physics, that's the I don't know physics way to say exactly what I just said. Right? So if you punch aiming for a spot behind the person and then drive through the your hand will hit the person with uh at your maximum speed because your maximum speed is not at the end it's in the middle okay so fighters who are experienced knew that intuitively, and it comes out sounding like it's a deep Eastern philosophy, but it's just physics, okay? You know, punch through to the other side of the person, and that will impart the max. Yeah, so that's just you're hitting them when your hand is moving at its fastest speed. And at its fastest speed, you have the highest kinetic energy, all right? And kinetic energy is a curious thing, kinetic energy, because it scales as the velocity squared.

Squared. Okay, so if you hit three times as fast, your fist is carrying three square, nine times the energy than if you hit it at one-third that speed. So kinetic energy, that's why a fastball, that's why a 100-mile-an-hour fastball in baseball has twice the kinetic energy as a 70-mile-an-hour fastball. It's not just like 30% or 40% more.

It's twice. Okay? So it's twice as hard to throw that's why it's so rare to get 100 mile an hour fastball what if i throw in a rotation as as a punch from down by my waistline and i come up and rotate through as well as and i lean through into it does that okay so here's the thing if If you're moving forward, you get some kinetic energy that way, and you also get momentum. Momentum goes directly with velocity. It's just the mass times the velocity, okay? Kinetic energy is one half times the mass times the velocity squared. By the way, what's the most famous equation there ever was? E equals mc squared.

Notice that c is the speed of light, and it's squared. And e is energy. So energy is familiar in equations with a velocity squared on the other side. Right on down to Einstein's famous equation. Equals mc squared. So what you're trying to do is transfer momentum from your hand to the target. And you want to deposit kinetic energy onto them. You want to do both of those things. So if you just, like I said, you're going to aim behind them because you're going to hit them with your hand at maximum speed.

So getting back to the Bruce Lee two-inch punch or whatever that was. From what I've been told, it's the one-inch punch. I was corrected in my ear by our producer. Oh, okay. The one-inch punch. Bruce spoke to you then. Okay, so if you look carefully, go back to the YouTube videos, okay, and look carefully.

He's not just punching from one inch. He is bracing from his rear leg and moving the mass of his entire body forward, rigidly connected to his fist. So it is not the mass of his fist that's hitting the target. It is his entire body connected. Yeah, he'll punch it forward, but watch his hips, his torso, and his hind legs. Hey, hind legs,

not a horse. And the legs positioned from the rear. Rewatch that. The thing is, you see the fist, and you focus it like a good magician. You watch that the thing is you see the you see the fist and you focus it like a good magician yeah you focus on the thing that you that you watch my hand no but all the rest of his body is doing this so he's really throwing all of his body mass into his fist as ostensibly correct so

so the the the so he's not getting much kinetic energy there, okay, because he doesn't have room to build up speed. He's getting mostly momentum. And momentum is mass times velocity. So velocity is low, but the mass is not just his fist. It's his whole arm and his body pushing forward. And that's why people recoil. Right.

So you're getting energy transfer just by the moving object. But if you're also twisting, then there's a rotational energy, okay, from the torque that your fist imparts when it makes contact, if it is turning at the point it makes contact. Okay? So you have an extra bit of energy that you can transmit in that way. So that's all I'm saying. All right, cool.

Okay, now, now, now. If a punch forward as opposed to a punch from below. Yeah. You can, I haven't researched this, but I'm betting you can throw a fist faster, just straightforward, than coming from below. But notice, and I've taken some boxing lessons, when you come from below, it's not just this. That's right.

Okay? Your shoulder, the entire mass of your arm, you're bracing off your hips, and all of this goes into that punch. So that's the boxer's version of the one-inch Bruce Lee punch. It is also the most... And that's why they can be so devastating when you transfer that much momentum to the person.

It is the most... So my dad was a Golden Gloves boxer, which is why I do not fight. Because he tried to teach me how to box. He also... And Chuck, you used to be a beautiful... have a beautiful face. What happened?

Your pappy said... He tried to teach me to box and he tried to teach me karate because he was also a karate, a karate man. And then he just I don't know karate, but I know. Wait, wait, I don't know karate, but I know. Wait a minute. Oh, Chuck. Oh, no, I know. You are not Gary because Gary cannot be expected to know this. No, it's from the movie. Shoot. No, wait. I don't know karate, but I know. Wait a minute. Oh, damn, Chuck. Oh, no, I know. I'm turning to you and not Gary, because Gary cannot be expected to know this. No, it's from the movie.

Shoot. No, no. It's from James Brown. Oh, I don't know. I don't know what that is. I thought it was Eddie Murphy from. I thought you grew up in the hood. Apparently not.

Okay. Okay, well, what is it? James Brown said, I don't know karate, but I know. But I know crazy. That's awesome. Yeah, crazy works too. We can talk about the kinetic energy of crazy. I don't know karate, but I know crazy.

No, Karazy. Karazy. Karazy. But anyway, yeah, after a few lessons, my dad bought me a gun. But my. He said, forget it. Just take a gun. Here's a gun. Here's a gun. But my... He said, forget it. He just take a gun. Here's a gun, son.

However, often we... I spent a lot of time watching boxing as a kid with my dad because of him. His favorite punch in the world is an uppercut. It's the most devastating blow in boxing because of what you just said. And also, it is the knockout punch because the way the transfer of energy force through.

We didn't even talk about the physiology of what's happening when you get hit. That's a whole other conversation. I'm just talking about simple movement of energy and momentum, but right. If your head snaps back, you know, that can't be good for your neck.

It is. The knockout punch is the knockout punch. Or your consciousness. Or your ego. Or your ego, right, right. So anytime you see a particularly potent punch, and just, again, you tend to focus on just the glove making contact.

Look at the positioning of the body that executed the punch, and chances are there's a lot extra momentum brought to the fist because it's rigidly connected to the rest of their body. Also, the most devastating punches that I've seen are when your

opponent happens to be going forward. And so now... You're getting an assist. It's an assist. It's a punch assist. Okay. Because now the speed that you would otherwise try to need to knock them out, they're helping you out. They're coming at you. And so the relative velocity is higher if someone is coming to you. So just take a look. Someone moves in. I've seen so many knockout punches executed simply because the person was unluckily leaning towards a punch that happened to come in. Wow.

So there you have it. But we've got to take a quick break. When we come back, more of sort of contact sports and the physics of getting hit, the physics of crashes, and the physics of anything that involves contact when we return. We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about the physics of collisions, of contact, of crashes. And we don't have other guests other than me and my co-hosts, Chuck and Gary. Chuck, Gary.

Hey. Yeah, you're still there. We are. So I'm trying to just bring my body of physics knowledge to bear on what I know of these collisions. And so that's our show. You're stuck with just the three of us. And well, good.

This is great. Lucky listener. Deal with it, okay. Lucky listener is the way I see it. They should be happy. Yeah. So let me, let's, Gary. Yes.

Exploiting the fact that you are my co-host. Let's talk about soccer. And so here's the thing. In a punch, in boxing, the fact that they wear gloves softens the the impact all right the momentum still goes but the kinetic energy but the acceleration of the head is a little bit softened because the the glove has to squish okay some of the energy gets absorbed into the squishing of the glove. All right? So that's why, you know, bare knuckles, you know, what's the expression, Chuck? It's like they took the gloves off. Bare knuckle.

Bare knuckle fighting. Just bare knuckle fighting. We're taking the gloves off, damn it. Yeah, so it has been reported that boxing might be less damaging if it was done without gloves. Because you would be knocked out sooner. And your teeth. Okay. Because think about it.

Because of the glove, the momentum is still getting put to your head. So your head gets snapped back 100 times rather than just three times. Right? And even after the hundred times, there's still the time where you do get knocked out. So you get knocked out in both cases

except with gloves you get hit in the head many, many more times. So that's been argued, but it would be bloodier because you'll be breaking skin more. Yeah, without a doubt.

Yeah, that's awful. So in soccer, Gary, when you make contact with the soccer ball, Yeah. it seems to me it will go farthest if you hit it with something that is rigid, such as your head, because your skull is hard, or the tip of the toe of your shoe.

That seems to be very hard places. No, the thing is if you use the tip of your boot, your cleat, your foot, you lose the control to direct it. Oh, because it's so tiny. Yeah, it can go anywhere. And it's a case of if you use a toe poke, as we call it, it's the point of last resort because you're trying just to stab it away or something like that. Oh, gotcha, gotcha.

So you are trading distance with precision. Yeah. The idea is to control the ball as an individual control the ball as a team and that depends on accuracy of passing or accuracy of shots on goal and you all wear shin guards right because there's yes we have we we do now we never used to oh your day in my day when men were men we didn didn't have shins. We played barefooted on a pitch that ran uphill both ways. And there were spikes and needles on the field. Exactly.

So the thing is, everybody understands the anatomy of the body, and the shin is not a place blessed with fatty tissue. It is directly bone. So imagine in the days when people didn't wear shin. And by the way, of course, in boxing, neither is your face. So, you know, you can punch people in the gut a lot because there's muscle to protect that. And it can wear you out a little,

but not as much as it would wear you out if you get hit in the face. Plus, no one wants to punch anyone in their buttocks. There's no... Well, I'm sure there's a market for everything. But if you think... Buttocks boxing. Someone's going to sell it. A lot of fleshy tissue there to absorb the punch.

So if you think about soccer players, we call them boots, you would call them cleats. There's like a hard nylon plastic sole and then the studs or sort of oval cleats themselves. If that hits the shin, ouch. I mean, that's where legs get broken. That's where things go dramatically wrong. And, you know, any soccer player that's had any time playing without shin guards, and we don't generally wear them in training, and sometimes players do get angry, there's a roadmap of scars down your shins

because it just gets cut to ribbons. And yeah, it's painful because there's nothing there to protect you. He had scars, and then he got a tattoo connecting the scars in an interesting sort of pattern. Well, that's fair enough. It's just when you get a tattoo and you pay X amount of thousands of dollars for it and then someone comes along and scars right across it.

After the fact, yes. Yeah, waste of money. Well, I have to tell you that I'm no good for the rest of this show because right now the only thing I can think about is butt boxing. How does it work? But you're still distracted by it. Yeah, I'm like, do you chase the person around and try to

hit them in the butt? Do you go butt to butt? Yeah, it's just, it's a reminder that the face is a more effective place to knock someone out than their buttocks.

Right. That's all. Well, then we should never say, I'm going to kick your ass. I'd be like, go right ahead. No!

Fuck! Thanks for saving my face. I mean, I think we've got slapstick comedy from the 1920s to thank for ass kicking. But go back a step. Chuck, let this be the moment that StarTalk announces to the world that of all the places on someone's body you're going to kick, kicking their ass is the least damaging. There you go.

You heard it here first. There you go. Go back a step and think about heading, Neil. Now, I played in a position as a defender where, a central defender where heading was part and parcel of the game. Heading is hitting the ball with your head? Yeah. Now, that ball could be traveling towards me at 30 miles an hour, 40 miles an hour. I will then go to it. The similar thing that we

said about in boxing, generally a knockout punch is the misfortune of you going forward and then punching into you. So what kind of forces are we dealing with here? If I'm heading a soccer ball, mind you, it's inflated. Okay, so it's basically double. So what's happening is the ball is moving forward at, let's say 30 miles an hour. So let's put up a black screen. Okay. Just a screen so you can't see behind it. The ball enters the screen at 30 miles an hour and then exits the screen at 30 miles an hour. So something had to slow down the ball to zero and give it energy to go back at 30 miles an hour. So it's not just a matter of absorbing the forward momentum. It's also imparting the backwards momentum when it comes out.

And if your head is doing all of that, you know, I'm okay. I'll just, you're not going to find me doing that. I'll put my hand up and hit it and just get the foul. No, see, the thing is you would head a ball in a game, but then in training you'd go away and practice heading a ball as soon as you got better at it. Now, I mean, my neck muscles when I was playing, I had something like a 17-and-a- a half inch, maybe even an 18 inch neck.

Wow. Because you strengthen all of this area around here to give you a greater point of stability with your head. And you don't normally hit a hanging ball. This ball is generally moving when you head it. So there's that combination of forces. Okay, so I can tell you this. If you have the choice, position yourself ball. This ball is generally moving when you head it. So there's that combination of forces. Okay. So I can tell you this, if you have the choice, position yourself so that you're not hitting the wall back exactly where it came, that you're deflecting the ball to some other location.

And in that way, that greatly reduces the momentum transfer because it becomes a momentum deflection. Okay. okay yeah we call it a glancing header a glancing header so uh it seems to me you should be able to position yourself to do it that way instead of sort of bouncing it straight back sometimes you don't have a choice sometimes that ball is going to come into the danger area of your goal you have to head it as far away as possible so the option is because as possible. Because you have other people on the offense right around you, I guess. Okay. And so how about football and rugby?

So they all have this equipment. You know, the whole point of the equipment is to absorb what they call the shock of an impact. But the rugby players don't, Neil. That's just it. They're as big as the NFL guys and on occasions as athletic, but there's no pads. What gets hit is you. The only thing between you and your opponent is the jersey.

And so you're telling us here in America we're wimps? No. Chuck, you heard that. No, there's no... That's exactly what I heard. Yeah, well, you want to hear what you want to hear. That's exactly what I heard. Yeah, well, you want to hear what you want to hear.

I'm going to let the NFL come talk to you. Yeah, they'll come talk to me again, bring all the big guys. So the thing is, it's a difference. It's not a judgment. It's a difference. And I think the NFL guys, it's that point of what gives you better protection. You've got dissipation of energy. Wait, wait, wait. Just to be clear,

you can't tackle someone in any way that you want, correct? No, there are rules and regulations because it was invented by the British and therefore it would be done by butlers and be very, very politely. No, it's... You cannot pick up an opponent and spike them and that's been done before.

And players have had their necks broken. Not good. But if you're going to tackle them, it has to be from above the waist? Is that correct? No, you can tackle below. You can tackle around the legs. You can't tackle above the neck.

There's certain rules. Oh, because you can't grab their neck. Okay, their head, and snap that off. There's no helmets. There's no pads. It's just slightly mad, demented guys who are rather large. Okay, so what's happening is all of the physics of the kinetic energy of the impact and the momentum is being absorbed into your physiology,

into your musculature. So they probably are in great pain after each game for that reason. The other rule, Neil, is you can only tackle the man with the ball. There's no all of a sudden you can just level somebody just because you feel like. Well, that's true in American football as well. But you can, Chuck, what's the word? You roll in front of someone. There's a word for that.

What's that? You can get in their way, but you can't tackle them if they don't have the ball. That's correct. Right, yeah, you can block in any kind of way, but you can't tackle. You can only tackle. There's no blocking of anybody. Oh, so you can't block in regular rugby, huh? No.

There's a scrum, and there's a group of players come together, equal number. They roll the ball in, which is weird because it's an egg shape. You roll that in between them. Whoever gets to it first then dominates possession. And then you pass it. You'll love this, Neil. You can, here we go. Let me get this right.

You can only move forward by passing the ball backwards. Yeah, yeah, lateral. Sure. But no, it has to go backwards. It can't go forwards. It has to be passed backwards. Yeah, yeah. Each time.

In American football, that's a lateral. That's a lateral. Oh, okay. In American football, yeah. lateral that's a lateral oh okay in American football yeah except the one case where I helped out our boy up in Seattle and he's grateful

it was a forward lateral on the gridiron but it was a backward lateral to the running players right yes a Galilean transformation that's what you called it

I was trying to no it's not just what I call it that's what it is okay so Neil what sort of it's not like what I call it. That's what it is. So, Neil, what sort of... It's not like I named this the Galilean transfer.

I dubbed it the Galilean transfer. Russell Wilson threw backwards to his running back, and they were going so fast, the ball moved forward on the grid. But the running back was behind him the entire time. So, for me, that was good. And I defended him with physics on Twitter, and they let it stick.

So I was very happy about that. So how much energy is dissipated by having pads? So quite a bit. So all it does is, instead of your muscles absorbing the energy, some of that energy gets absorbed in the pad. And so the energy gets shared with other things have you ever seen the shoulder pads on a football player they're it's like a gladiator it's it's layers yeah okay and so you hit one layer

that has to transfer that hit to the next layer and then to the next layer and then to your shoulder so there's a lot of dissipation that's's the word here, going on before your body ends up absorbing it. And the same with the helmets. The better designed helmets, the cushions will absorb the impact in a way to try to reduce the impact that ends up in your brain. Because your brain is just sort of floating there, right? It's not just rigidly held in place. So that's the whole point of pads. That's the entire point. Except that the pads actually make it so that there are hits that you may deliver that you otherwise would not if you were not wearing pads. For instance, well, they've stopped this now. It's against the rules to lead with your head.

But for the longest time in the NFL, the way you tackled was to lead with your head and use those pads as a weapon as much as you could. But what you would do is if you're leading with your head, it means you're leading with the hardest part of your entire get out get up okay so if you led with your shoulder your your shoulder pad will absorb some of the energy you're trying to put into your opponent if you lead with your elbows well you got flesh there and bone and tissue if you lead with your helmet if you have a strong neck your helmet is rigid okay basically rigid on the impact in other words the helmet doesn't bend when you make contact with the other person. So if you saw the head tackles, yeah, those are violent. I mean, oh, my gosh. You've just weaponized the human body.

Yes, you've weaponized the human body. Okay, so what are the physics behind you'd rather be the hitter than the one being hit? No, all that matters is how massive are you. It's all about the mass. Okay. So I could run at someone at 20 miles an hour, and if they're that big, I could bounce off them.

Yeah, you bounce off them, and then your energy, you know, gets reversed back into you, and you suffer all the damage. You're the one who gets hurt. You're the one who gets hurt. And they look around and say, what was that? Was that a gnat? You were too stupid not to see the really, really big guy and went to tackle him. So it's not an accident that the football players on the line, defense or offense, are the biggest players on the field.

Right. All right? Even if they could run fast, you'd still put them on the line because that's where you want to make sure nobody gets through. And it's always the low guy wins. Well, it can but if you're smart about it you can there are other ways you can maneuver once you know where someone's center of mass is but all other things being equal yeah if you're if you're if you crouch down low and someone comes to your shoulder you just stand up and flip them over i mean there

there are ways of maneuvering that i'm just saying saying knowledge of where the center of mass is of the person has great value to how it is you should be blocking them. And so mass matters. And in the next segment, we're going to talk about car crashes, not only in the street, but also in races. In fact, we should take a break now. And let's do that. And when we return, StarTalk Sports Edition, the physics of crashes and hits and getting pummeled, we're going to talk about the physics of car crashes. And butt boxing.

Butt boxing? Yeah! And Chuck will talk about butt boxing. I'm all about it, baby. When we return. We're back with StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. Gary O'Reilly. Gary.

Hey. Tweeting as my three left feet or something. What's your Twitter handle? Yes. All words. My three left feet. My three left feet. All right.

And Chuck. Hey, hey. Chuck, nice comic. Yes, sir. Thank you. Very good. And let me remind people, you have a TED Talk. Just want to remind people of that.

I appreciate that. Yeah. Where you're just sort of getting on the case of technology and how it has changed the human dynamic. That was funny. I really enjoyed it. Oh, I'm glad you liked it. Thanks.

It should be easy to find. Just, you know, Google Ted. Chuck, nice Ted. Chuck, nice Ted. And if there. Chuck Nice Ted. Chuck Nice Ted. And if there's a guy named Ted Chuck who's nice, that's not the right one. Right, exactly. Screw that guy. I don't care how nice Ted Chuck is.

Tweet us and tell us just how good he isn't. So we're talking about hits and the physics of hits. We didn't give full attention to baseball because I want to come back to baseball with its own entire episode. Because there's just so much to explore there, especially coming around the playoff season. But let's now talk about cars. All right. So before we get to the racetrack, you all know probably because I think you've seen ads that if you buy a car and they talk about its safety, I think they've gotten the message across that one of the things that makes a car safe is, in addition to airbags, is that it has crumple zones. Yes. If you get a side impact, rear impact, front impact, and if that energy goes to crumpling the car,

then it does not go into crumpling you. I like that. Provided you are in a casing so that the casing is not part of what gets squished. So the whole exercise is do everything you can to dissipate the kinetic energy. That's the entire point of this exercise. There's no other point, okay?

So, watch what happens. If you have a very high mass car, okay? Very high mass. And a low mass car slams into you, the high mass car And a low mass car slams into you. The high mass car barely will notice this. And it's the low mass car who will need the crumple zones to save its occupant. Okay?

So this happened to me. All right? My very first car was a land yacht. It was gifted to me. I didn't even know how to drive when it was gifted to the car. From someone who died. It's a long story. But anyway, I had this car.

Wait, now you got to tell us what it is. Because back in the day, there were so many great land yachts. Okay, this land yacht, it was a Mercury Montego, 400 cubic inch engine. I got seven miles per gallon with a tailwind. Okay? Sweet. Downhill with a tailwind, nine miles a gallon. All right. So this is long ago.

Plus it ran on regular gas. So this thing was like— Leaded fuel? Leaded gas. Well, they still even serve leaded. Here's the point. I'm sitting there at a red light, okay? There's a car in front of me.

I forgot what car that was. It might have been a Toyota. There was a Volvo behind me. We're just sitting there at the red light. Then I just hear a big crash. And immediately after that crash, I lurch forward. And my car then bumps into the car in front of me. Okay?

Mm-hmm. I look back. The Volvo got crunched in the rear and in the front. It was the Volvo that got hit. It got hit by one of these TR7 sports cars. And it plowed under the rear of the Volvo, damaged the back of the Volvo. The front of the Volvo was damaged. The driver was perfectly safe, as you'd expect in a Volvo.

The driver in front of me, sorry, it was a Honda, a Japanese lighter car. For the day, these were very light cars, relative to other cars on the road. And that person, you know, the neck was in a brace, and the rear of the car got damaged. My car? a brace that to put the and and the car got the rear of the car got damaged my car there was a little chip in the taillight plastic cover and that was it so i backed up and drove home so so so if you have very high mass the concept of crumple zones i'm a relative to other cars the concept of crumple zones is not, it doesn't matter. Okay.

You don't talk about front end collisions with cement trucks. Okay. Unless it's a cement truck and it's kind of a collision with another cement truck. All right. So higher mass almost always wins every day. Okay. In an encounter. So now let's get back to the racetrack where every car is exactly the same mass.

All right. They go very high speeds. Very high kinetic energy. Okay. Let's say there's a disturbance on the track. A wheel flies off. Car loses control and it tumbles. All right.

Okay. Yeah. Now you're getting Chuck's interest. Now I'm liking some, I'm liking NASCAR right now. Okay. Yes. So,

and it's not uncommon to see the car just tumble and pivot and they make spectacular videos and the car breaks into pieces and it slides and tumbles and it goes a quarter mile down the

track it was going 200 miles an hour going into the accident and then the car comes to a stop and the driver gets out and walks away if you don't know physics you'll say to yourself that's a miracle because you're paying attention to the car getting damaged without thinking to yourself that that's exactly what you want to happen to protect the life of the driver you want everything else to get destroyed that's the nascar version of a crumple zone right it's have the thing it takes energy to fling a tire off to the side. Okay, you ever think about that? You try to throw a tire into the, well, that car's, part of that car's energy went off with the tire. Other part went to the tumbling and the pivots and the friction and all of that happens.

Then it comes to a rest. Took a quarter mile to go from 200 miles an hour to zero. And the driver walks. Now, here's the catch. The catch is the driver goes from 200 miles an hour to zero over that length of time and over that length of distance. That reduced the rate of deceleration on the body. It is the rate of deceleration that kills you.

Okay? That's that kills you. Okay? That's what kills you. You want to slow that down as much as possible. So let's go back to Dale Earnhardt. Okay? The tragic death of Dale Earnhardt. If you look at his accident, okay, his car hit the side embankment, and he went from 200 miles an hour to zero

in, what was it, a second or at most? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So forget the car. His body is going 200 miles an hour. Then his body is going zero.

Where does that kinetic energy go? It goes back into his body. Right. And that basically kills him. It's like he got crushed by 200 miles an hour. Basically. Basically, that's correct. So you keep thinking you die because something crushes you or hurts you that way.

You've got to lose 200 miles an hour. Right. That kinetic energy has to go somewhere. That's why asteroids that are not too big that would make it all the way to the ground, the kind that'll sort of

explode in midair, you'd say, why would it explode? Did it have TNT? No. It's going 10 miles a second and it sees air. All right?

Air feels like, oh, you can move through it. Not if you're going 10 miles a second. It's like a brick wall if you're moving at 10 miles a second. And evidence of this is if you're going 65 miles an hour down the freeway and you roll down your window, stick your hand out, you'll feel wind blowing against your wrist that's hard to resist.

Try it next time. Just go at 50 miles an hour. What's better is if you stick your face out, your whole cheeks fill up with air. Okay, Chuck, have you had a species check? Are you a dog? Have you tongue dangling? I might be because it's a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun.

I'm wondering what gene in the wolf survived such that the dog wants to put his head out the window? That means a wolf would enjoy that. That's to put his head out the window. That means a wolf would enjoy that. That's what that means. Could you imagine driving along and a car comes towards you and there's a wolf hanging out of the window? You do totally.

Dogs like it. We made dog, we invented dogs. Dogs are GMOs by the way. The first GMO we ever had. We invented dogs from wolves, wolf genes. So that's got to be a gene somewhere in the wolf GMO we ever had. We invented dogs from wolves, wolf genes. So that's got to be a gene somewhere in the wolf, but we'll see. Anyhow, so the air resistance

just at 50 miles an hour is significant. So now it comes in. It has the kinetic energy of its mass moving at 10 miles per second. And then it stops moving because the air resistance prevents it. Where does that kinetic energy go? It goes back into the object instantaneously.

And the only way the object can respond to that is to heat up catastrophically. And when you heat something catastrophically, it explodes. And so my point here is, Dale Earnhardt did not slow down slowly. He slowed down quickly. That's what kills you.

So the YouTube compilation, and they walked, and they show these fiery collisions, and then they walk. Yeah, yeah. Plus they're in a roll cage, right? So that helps, of course. And they're wearing fireproof, fire-resistant... Jumpsuits. Jumpsuits. So even if it catches on fire, you know, they've had a little bit of time to get out,

as long as they're not knocked unconscious, right? And plus, there are people all around to help. My point is that the fact that the crash is spectacular is not alone enough information to judge how lethal it is. That's all. And the faster you come to a stop, generally the less likely you will survive that collision. That's why cars, when they encounter trees, doesn't bode well for the driver generally but if you if you careen off the side of the the cliff not the cliff but the the side the the embankment and then the car rolls if you have on your seat belt if you don't have your seat belt you break your neck because you're you're you're moving a projectile inside the car if you have your seat belt and the car rolls

and it comes to a stop down the thing, okay, you'll probably walk from that accident because it took time for the car to come to a stop. Cool. So that's just a little bit of fact about that that I think is not as appreciated as it needs to be. And a good thing aboutascar and and formula one all those cars have basically the same mass so when one bumps the other you know it's like the the balls on a string you know right you know the the bumping is sort of your your sort of equal it's equal access bumping okay the momentum goes over you you you uh no one has a mass advantage, is the point in the race.

The way you could have if you drove a Hummer in the street in a world of Yugos. I don't think they make those anymore. What's the little car? Fiat. Yeah, the little Fiat.

Fiat Cinquecento. Yes. So what we need is monster truck NASCAR. With rockets. That's what we need. No, no, if everything scales up exactly the same, then everything's just the same.

Oh, no, no, no. I just mean one person gets to have a monster truck. That person would be you, Chuck, am I wrong? You know it would be. Wait, wait. Why are these cars in front of me? Let me just roll over the cars to get to the front of the pack. Is there anything that can be done to make them even safer?

I mean, Chuck and I have reinvented NASCAR in the past by putting Saturn V rockets on them. Yes, and you've reinvented boxing to make that safer by punching in the buttocks. Yes. It was obvious to us. Is there anything you could do to dissipate energy better? From collisions.

What could you do to the walls? Because, I mean, you've got to hit something. Oh, interesting. So what could you do to the walls to make it, to have the transfer of energy? Well, that's what we do. That's why the wall. Barrels of water, those big barrels of water.

Yeah, yeah, so we already kind of have that. Joe, we've seen it in off-ramps from freeways. Yeah. If there's a sort of a wedge where the road divides, there typically is big yellow tanks. They could have sand, they could have water, something to absorb the energy, okay? Thinking of other ways to absorb energy,

they have in long, sustained downhills, trucks, if they lose their brakes, they have these runaway truck lanes where they pull off to the side. And it's just this loose gravel, and the wheel doesn't move well in gravel, and the gravel just eats away the kinetic energy, and it comes to a stop. So we have tried to be clever about this. And I think in Le Mans, is it where there's stretches of road where they just build up tires in case the tires are hard to squeeze, but at high speed and high energy,

you do squeeze them, which means they absorb a lot of energy, this sort of thing. So we have given some thought, we, the people who design these, have given thought to it. And so, and I think fewer race car drivers are dying today than who once did.

And on StarTalk, we had Mario Andretti. Do you remember that? Yeah. I had to ask him about a famous quote attributed to him, and sure enough, it was this quote. He said, if you are in complete control of your car you're not in the race so that makes sense so so when you see cars just on the brink

and completely lose control that's that's kind of what he's talking about you're you're this this is a very finely tuned highly honed performance of driving, driving skill. So, and one other thing, I just want to talk about track and field. In the high jump, and especially in the pole vault. Yeah. Now we have enough information to ask, why doesn't the pole vaulter land on cement? Interesting. That could be one and done. Why not ask that question? The reason is,

they would be going from full speed to zero speed in a fraction of a second. And all that kinetic energy goes back into their body. Oh, how much energy does it take to break your femur? I have that energy available.

Let's do it. What does it take to break your femur i have that energy available let's do it what does it take to break your neck that energy is available let's do it and you break all these bones until all the damage to your body equals the kinetic energy you had on the fall that's why jumping out of windows can be so deadly because when you hit the ground, all that energy goes back into your body and it finds things to break. Okay? And that's how this works. Well, if one good thing comes out of this show, it's the fact that perhaps we will lower

the number of people jumping out of windows. Okay. And just to be clear, the pole vaulter lands in big, cushiony pillows. Right. Extending the time it takes to go from their highest speed to zero. And they stretch themselves out at that. They don't even land like they're just coming straight down.

They fall back and stretch out when they land, too. That can help. That can help. Yeah. So you're increasing the mass. The cross-section. Yes… The cross-section. Yes. The cross-section so more of the cushion can support your body.

Yeah. Dudes, we got to like call it a day. We done? Oh, man. Wow. Yeah. I've got to come back and do this again. And we did that.

And plus, we're going to offload baseball to its own… Baseball as a contact sport. Maybe we'll call it that. Yes. I hope you didn't even touch on ice hockey yet. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah.

Ice hockey. Oh, man. Okay. I want a version of baseball where everybody on the field gets a bat. No. What do they do with the bat? No, no, no. A version where if the pitcher hits the batter with the ball,

they calculate how much kinetic energy the ball had, and then they allow you to hit the pitcher with your bat with that same amount of kinetic energy. Wow. Then that'll be even, Stephen, and you continue the game. Let me tell you something. That would end. Physics.

No, that would end people getting hit with balls. Yeah. You just found the answer. That could work. That could work. Guys, we got to run. This has been fun, and we should do this again because we only really scratched the surface.

But the physics is everywhere, and that's the good thing about physics. You can know things because of the fundamental rules that undergird what's going on, even if you've never actually played the sport. So it's just, that's science. That's how and why science works for us all. So Gary, good to have you.

Thank you. As always, Chuck, thanks for being my comedic co-host. You bring that force of levity to it all. Butt boxing. It's the new thing. Remember. Butt boxing. It's the new thing. Remember. Butt boxing. Neil deGrasse Tyson

for StarTalk Sports Edition. Keep looking up.