![]() We could reduce the kinetic energy of a car to nothing by running the car into a tree or brick wall. That ball then moves until gravity brings it back and the cycle starts over again. The energy of one moving ball is transferred through the other balls until it finds the last ball and gives it motion. Image via Newtons cradle animation book 2 – Newton’s cradle – Wikipedia Creative Commons: DemonDeLuxe (Dominique Toussaint) Well, that’s because fundamentally they ARE the same thing, and as proof, I give you Albert Einstein’s famous Theory of Relativity which states: So, all the energy you had this morning and all the energy you will ever have in your lifetime has always existed and will always exist in one form or another.īut, I’m talking here about stuff like hydrogen molecules and grass and energy as if it’s all the same thing. Eventually, if you trace it back far enough you get to the big bang and maybe even before that. ![]() Those molecules came from the gaseous cloud that created the sun a few billion years ago, which came from other stars that blew up a few billion years before that. The sunlight came from the fusion reaction happening in the sun which came from the hydrogen molecules in the sun. The cow grew from the grass it ate in the fields and the grass came from the sunlight and the rain that fell on it. You’re saying that all the energy I had after drinking that cup of coffee (which has little caloric value) this morning was already there? What about when I get tired? What happened to all my energy? Well, the energy you had this morning came from the steak you ate yesterday, which came from the cow that gave up its life for your dinner. This law states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Very astute of you.” Slowing something down does indeed reduce its kinetic energy because we have reduced its velocity.īut now we get into another fundamental area of physics which is governed by what is known as the Conservation of Energy law. But, you say, the kinetic energy equation contains velocity, so if we slow an object down, aren’t we changing its energy? To which I say, “You are absolutely correct, grasshopper. Pushing from the front would slow it down. Pushing on it from the side won’t change the amount of energy the object has, it just changes its direction, and pushing from behind would increase its energy and thereby its speed. Lastly you could push on it from the front to slow it down. Or you could push on the car from behind to make it go faster (in effect, increasing its energy). This would be like steering the wheels on a car, causing the tires to generate a sideways force. You could push on the object sideways to make it deviate from the “straight line” it is traveling on. if you want to change the direction it’s moving in, or you want to speed it up or slow it down, you have to provide the “unbalance” force that Newton was talking about. Once you have an object in motion, if you want to change that motion, i.e. It goes back to Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion, which states: “An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.” All objects, when they are in motion, have what is known as Kinetic Energy. Its entire purpose is to convert the energy of motion onto heat. ![]() EnergyĪt a very fundamental level, the entire braking system in a vehicle is an energy conversion device. To better understand the impact of cross drilling, we need to dig into some of the engineering behind brakes, and look specifically at the function of brake rotors. Cross drilling is a lot of work and expense to go through just for looks and to let a few gasses escape. Where aesthetics are concerned, depending on your year of birth or simply where you land on the topic, it’s entirely possible that nothing looks cooler behind a wheel than a cross-drilled brake disc.įair enough, but I wanted to know more. As most would expect, there is often an accompanying reduction in weight as well. ![]() ![]() Some race cars have them so they must be good for the street, right? But beyond the esthetics and the fact that some race cars use them, are there engineering reasons why you should put them on your car?Īmong other things, cross-drilling provides a pathway for gasses created during the friction process to escape. Most car enthusiasts I talked to about this see cross-drilled rotors as a cool upgrade. ![]()
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