This week on Reactions , we’re talking the science of airbags.
They are not designed to inflate in rear-end or rollover crashes or in most side crashes. An accelerometer (electronic chip that measures acceleration or force) detects the change of speed. The idea behind the airbag is to take advantage of the physics of a crash. Are all air bags the same?
Chemistry involved in mechanism of airbags. The airbag listens too. Advertisement.
Air bags are designed to keep your head, neck, and chest from slamming into the dash, steering wheel or windshield in a front-end crash. Share on Twitter. Print. The constraints that it has to work within are huge. And they work because of chemistry, with some physics thrown in. The body of the driver, of course, doesn't. How do Airbags work? How air bags work. They were first available on Ford and Chevrolet cars in the 1970s and because of their effectiveness have since become mandatory on all new cars (in most countries anyway). How do airbags work? There are three parts to an airbag that help to accomplish this feat: The bag itself is made of a thin, nylon fabric, which is folded into the steering wheel or dashboard or, more recently, the seat or door. What an airbag wants to do is to slow the passenger's speed to zero with little or no damage.
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TFLcar’s Charlotte Roadcap takes to the whiteboard to draw out the chemical reactions that activate a vehicle’s airbag. In the case of a head-on collision, a car usually stops fast. In this episode of Reactions, learn about the past and present of vehicle airbags and the lifesaving chemistry and physics that make them work: Explore further. In summary, an airbag lowers the number of injuries by (1) increasing the time over which the decelerating force is applied and thus lowers the force exerted (by the steering wheel or dash board) on the body, and (2) by spreading the force over a larger area of the body. Airbags, which were originally referred to as Supplementary Restraint Systems (SRS) have been around for a while. The chemical at the heart of the air bag reaction is called sodium azide, or NaN 3 . What an airbag wants to do is to slow the passenger's speed to zero with little or no damage. The pressure in the airbag, and hence the amount of NaN 3 needed in order for the airbag to be filled quickly enough to protect us in a collision, can be determined using the ideal-gas laws, and the kinetic theory of gases allows us to understand, at the molecular level, how the gas is responsible for the pressure inside the airbag. How Airbags Work. The airbag has the space between the passenger and the steering wheel or dashboard and a fraction of a second to work with. When a car hits something, it starts to decelerate (lose speed) very rapidly. The goal of an airbag is to slow the passenger's forward motion as evenly as possible in a fraction of a second. The bag then literally bursts from its storage site at up to 200 mph (322 kph) -- faster than the blink of an eye!
And remember: Airbags are meant to work … Share on LinkedIn . Airbag Inflation. Share on Reddit. The inflation system is not unlike a solid rocket booster (see How Rocket Engines Work for details). | Chemistry - 53 - Smart Learning for All ... NA TFLcar’s Chemistry of Cars, Ep. How do airbags work?
The airbag has the space between the passenger and the steering wheel or dashboard and a fraction of a second to work with. South Africa has enforced this since 1998. ; If the deceleration is great enough, the accelerometer triggers the airbag circuit.Normal braking doesn't generate enough force to do this. Air Bag Deactivation: How Air Bags Work. How air bags work. Air bags are not inflated from some compressed gas source but rather from the products of a chemical reaction. 2 – How Do Airbags Work? Figure 5a. The constraints that it has to work within are huge.