During the Spring Semester of 2006 I received a disturbing phone call from my mo

Question

During the Spring Semester of 2006 I received a disturbing phone call from my mother.
"Douglas, we were just in a train wreck on the Amtrack Train in Southern California. But be at ease;
your Dad and I are okay. We didn't even feel the collison with the Semi Truck-Trailer that was sitting on
the track. The Engine was in the back of the train pushing it. We were the in the car closest to the
engine. There were five cars altogether. The front car had one person in it, an employee, a look out.
He pulled the emergency brake and jumped into the car behind him. That front car was smashed
together pretty badly. But noboby on any car was hurt. Why didn't we even feel the collision?"
(Yes the train and truck stuck together after the collision.)

Explanation / Answer

There are a few different factors that kept you, your family, and the rest of the passengers safe. First, the front car absorbed a lot of the kinetic energy lost stopping the train. This is observable in the way that it "was smashed pretty badly". Secondly, the train had a lot more inertia than the truck. The truck probably moved and was dragged some distance before finally coming to a rest. Finally, it wasn't just the fact that the train had huge inertia, but the fact that the passengers had relatively small inertia that caused the stop to feel so smooth. It took a lot of force over a long period of time to stop the train and relatively little to stop you, the passengers. Thus, the collision and massive release of kinetic energy may have seemed large comparatively, yet it was nearly unnoticeable to the passengers.

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