We have already added seat belts and crumple zones to cars. Is there anything else we can include? How about we add an explosive in the steering wheel. Brilliant. That’s exactly what we will do. We will put a bomb in the car and it will save lives. Exploring the science behind the airbag.
Key Takeaways:
- The original idea for the automotive airbag dates back to the early 1950s.
- it’s a chemical reaction that produces gas to fill the bag—but that’s essentially an explosion.
- The entire process of inflating the airbag during a crash occurs in fractions of seconds.
“It turns out the only way to get an airbag to inflate fast enough to be useful is with an explosive.”
Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/the-insane-physics-of-airbags/
