ok, so lets say i break a beer bottle over somebody's head...?

Question

so long as the bottle breaks, does it matter how hard i swing it? like, would it hurt more if i swung the bottle as hard as i possibly could, versus swinging the bottle just hard enough to bring it to it's breaking point? it seems like swinging it harder would exert more force, but is there a limit to the amount of force the bottle could inflict before breaking?

Answer 1

Couple of points.

1. You hit someone with a beer bottle, unless you hit them really.... really hard... it won't shatter. You're more likely to crack their skull.

2. If you did shatter the bottle, it's better for the person you hit because:
Momentum transfer. This is the "bouncing action" that the previous poster was refering to. If it hits and doesn't shatter. Then 2 * m * v momentum is transferred to the skull in a very small time (high impulse). If it shatters, then different pieces move off in different directions and you get an overall dispersion of momentum away from the person you hit.

This is equivalent to hitting a wall with a steel ball and a alumnium automobile. Cars are designed to crumple on impact in order to distribute the momentum transfer evenly throughout the frame of the car rather than transferring it to the interior. When a steel ball hits a wall... the wall falls, because the steel ball is highly inelastic, so all the momentum is transferred undispersed into the ball/wall system.

So, yes, if you swing harder, there's more momentum to account for in either case. The limit of the amount of force the bottle could inflict before breaking is a slightly more complicated issue which deals with tensile and shearing strengths of materials (glass in this case). Because of the structure of glass, this is very difficult to pin down directly, and would, at best, be a range of thresholds.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

It exerts more force if it breaks over their head because of a basic physics concept known to me as a 'bouncing' action. Some of the shards will fly up and others will just drop down, and the force of the shards flying up is exerted by the head pushing back on the shards, so, swinging it to a breaking point would inflict more damage than doing it just before breaking. There is a limit to the amount of force, I think, since at some point of force the bottle will simply disintegrate, like hitting someone with a snowball. There is a limit, but I doubt a human body could be physically able to reach it.

Answer 3

It does not matter how hard you swing, as long as the bottle breaks. The breaking of the bottle represents the fact that it cannot take any more force taht the head applies on the bottle, therefore it smashes.

Answer 4

Hi. All the energy of the bottle has to be absorbed. More energy means, yes, it does matter.

Answer 5

Unless you intend to break it over your own head, I suggest you read the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault.

Answer 6

What do you smoke ?