If a fly collides with a car travelling the opposite direction will the car slow down to a standstill for a really...

If a fly collides with a car travelling the opposite direction will the car slow down to a standstill for a really short duration? Before the fly can start moving in the car's direction it will have to first reach a speed of 0. When that happens that must mean the car is also at standstill.

Lmao

That's a good one OP. Obviously the car doesn't stop, but I can't solve the apparent contradiction. Im stumped

Objects never actually touch each other. They just get extremely close. There is always space between atoms.

As the bug "hits" the car, really it is just the front atoms of the bug are repulsed by the atoms of the windshield, causing it to slow down. Again, they never actually contact, just get slower as they get closer. Eventually the bug stops completely and reverses in a very short amount of time. The car itself never changes its speed.

So if you hit someone in the head with a baseball bat none of the matter actually makes contact. What kills you is the repulsive force of the atoms?

In a sense, yes. If that repulsive force didn't exist, then the atoms of the bat would just harmlessly pass through the atoms of your head. The physical parts of atoms are much smaller than the area they occupy in terms of repulsion.

There are no physical parts of an atom

Yes there are.

Wouldn't that mean there is nothing physical, period, then?

>back into guys car
>get out
>guy steps out of car with baseball bat
>he swings at your head
>nothing happens
>he tries again
>fission explosion

That's not how speed works in the first place.
Anyway, when an object as small as a fly hits an object as big as a car going in the opposite direction an extremely tiny bit of the velocity of the car is imparted into the fly to get it to move into the opposite direction. Technically, the fly will have been in a standstill for a matter of milliseconds, but the car will just continue on its merry way at a speed almost exactly the same as before.

Ta-dah.

This was missing:

>That's not how speed works in the first place.

How does it work?

>Technically, the fly will have been in a standstill for a matter of milliseconds

How can it be if the windhsield of the car is moving?

Just tell him the car never actually made contact with his car

>phase into a guys car
>pass through door
>guy swings bat at your head
>Suddenly entire planet collapses from the force of gravity to a singularity

I could go all the way into this, but it's in the middle of the cocking night.

Fuck it, it depends on where you're viewing it from.
I'm guessing the scenario is that you're viewing a fly somehow going 80km/h at a car going 80km/h in the exact opposite direction.
Let's say the car is on the right going to the left, and the fly is on the left going to the right. Now, relative to you, the fly and the car with both hit eachother exactly in the middle if we don't account for drag(If we act like the scenario is for some reason going in a complete vacuum in outer space, to make it easier to explain). When the fly hits the car, due to the fly having a lower mass the fly will get pushed into the opposite direction. Due to the car having a much higher mass than the fly, only a relatively negligible amount of force is required to propel the fly in the same direction as the car. Now, until the time of impact both the fly and the car will be in a state in which no force is applied to them whatsoever. When both objects hit they'll exert a force on eachother, pushing them in the direction the colliding object was going. So the fly is pushing the car with a relatively negligible amount of force, while the car is pushing the fly with a relatively huge amount of force. This makes the car slow down a negligible amount while still going in the same direction as it was going before, while the fly will now quickly change velocity until it's going to same speed as the car. As in, since the time both objects hit eachother they've exerted a force on eachother based on their relative velocities at the time. Both forces exerted will slowly decrease until both objects are going at the same speed in the same direction. At some point the fly will be in a standstill while the car is still going. To be continued.


This is if we're in space and both objects are indestructible, and things do not deform and yada yada yada et cetera. Just look it up already.

At that moment the fly won't be exerting any force on the car anymore as it's not pushing against it. But due to the car still going in the original direction it will push into the fly, relatively making the fly push into it and thus both objects are exerting forces on eachother again while the fly speeds up and the forces both objects exert on eachother decrease. This continues until both objects are going in the same direction at the same exact speed.

Like I said, this is assuming we're talking about a head-on collision in space with no nearby gravity wells and indestructible objects which cannot be deformed.
I'm going to sleep now.
Or soon:tm:.

Just like, look it up or something while I try to sleep.
By the way, I have no clue if I even said sensible shit right there, it's 1:14 and I already deprived myself of sleep before yesterday.

stop stealing my gifs faggit

>By the way, I have no clue if I even said sensible shit right there

I still feel you didn't explain:

>Technically, the fly will have been in a standstill for a matter of milliseconds

How can it be if the windhsield (well the whole car) of the car is moving?

Or maybe you did explain that and I didn't get it.

The fly's kinetic energy get cancelled by the windshield and the overall net force is in the direction of the car.

The fly isn't a rigid body. Neither is the car.

Fuck no

...Yeah that's a much shorter explanation.

If you mean "...overal net force is in the same direction the car is going"

No there isn't, what we perceive as "physical" is just a force surrounding a point that interacts with other points preventing them from moving within a certain distance of them.

You don't necessarily have to quote the OP if you reply to his thread topic. it's assumed you mean to answer to the OP if you don't state otherwise.

That's basically quantum mechanics. Everything is energy fields confined by other energy fields.

inconsequential to the scenario

What the fuck? Are there seriously this many brainlets ITT?
What is elasticity?
A small portion of the windscreen will deform elastically to zero speed and then speed up again to retain its original shape.
You could easily experimentally verify this with a basketball and a moving mattress for example

this doesn't answer the question, brainlet

Elastic deformation. The fly splatters, and the windshield flexes slightly.

Nothing is truly rigid.

Everything has a speed of zero when you freeze time

Bingo, worst possible case the window flexes a small distance inward bringing the point velocity at that location to zero for a moment before it accelerates back to its orginial shape.

Did you even take basic physics or learn anything about collisions? The kinetic energy of the fly is dissipated into pieces with velocities based on the angle and energy of the car. While the car will lose some kinetic energy in these pieces, it's not enough to stop it.