Car Collision Tests (In Minecraft)

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:01]Hello everyone, it's me Sky and today we will be testing car versus springmounted wall collisions and investigate methods to dampen them.

[00:00:14]Test one. We will first collide an unmodified car with the wall. The car rapidly accelerates to 12 m a second and bam, crashes.

[00:00:28]What an impact.

[00:00:31]Now, let's break down what just happened. First collision.

[00:00:37]The car bumps into the wall, applying a force of 1,125 pixel newtons to the wall. This accelerates the 21 kilopixelgram wall at 53 m a second squared. However, the wall doesn't fly off as all of the force is dissipated via the springs into the level.

[00:01:04]However, the wall hits the car back with the same force as Newton's third law, which stops the car.

[00:01:14]That collision was bad for the wall at least.

[00:01:19]So, let's investigate methods to dampen the impact. My first instinct was a block sensor to cut off power to the wheels, but I think the second idea involving a spring-mounted bumper demonstrates things better. So, we will test it first. This is the car with the bumper. I chose springs just powerful enough to hold the bumper up.

[00:01:42]Test two.

[00:01:45]Now, let's ram this baby into a wall.

[00:01:49]Car accelerates and bonks the wall, then continues making the wall fold down because of the strange angle of the bumper. Now, let's break it down again. The car's bumper bonks the wall. First, the bumper has less mass. And by Newton's second law, force equals mass times acceleration. It applies proportionately less force at only 84 pixel newtons for multiple seconds instead of 1,125 pixel newtons for 1 second leading to less acceleration and less movement of the wall.

[00:02:31]As the car applies force to compress the springs, the springs push back, ultimately stopping the car.

[00:02:40]The collision may look worse than before. However, it is in fact not as bad because if you actually look at the footage, the car continues moving. And because of the strange angle of the bumper, it causes the wall to bend down.

[00:02:59]Now, let's test the car with the laser braking system.

[00:03:05]Test three.

[00:03:09]R accelerates and slows down only lightly bonking the wall. This breakdown focuses on Newton's first law, which is that objects in motion stay in motion while objects at rest stay at rest unless an external force is applied. Now, it's obvious how this applies to the start, the acceleration. The wheel applies a force to the ground and the ground applies a force back to the car which causes the car to accelerate.

[00:03:41]Now, this raises two questions.

[00:03:43]Why does the car stop accelerating at 12 m a second? And why does it slow down when the wheels stop receiving force?

[00:03:55]Well, this means a mystery force must be involved.

[00:03:58]And that force is friction with both the air and the ground which causes the car to decelerate the because the car is moving slower F= ma and it applies a much smaller force because it needs to decelerate much less before it reaches before it comes to a stop.

[00:04:24]With that, the video is over. Vote in the Google form below which collision dampening method you liked most.