If you’re looking for the Stephen Granade who’s a roboticist, science lecturer, podcaster, and occasional actor, you’ve found him! I’m active on a number of social networks, including:
- Google+, where I’m part of an active and thriving science community
- Twitter, where I make jokes and post links to interesting science
- Facebook, where I make more personal posts
You can always reach me through my email.
Hello! I read your explanation of how and why cars burn in regard to the Michael Hastings crash. I was wondering if you could explain the forces that would be needed to propel the engine 150 ft from the crash site. It would seem that all of the very large bolts securing the engine to the frame would have to be sheared as well the bolts securing the transmission which is also attached to the frame of the vehicle. It would seem to this non-scientist that the forces needed to shear these very substantial bolts would have also disintegrated the vehicle far beyond what appears in the videos. Just wondering if you could shed light on that aspect of this crash.
thanks!
Vinny
Not easily, I’m afraid. There are all kinds of ways that metal can fly apart. I’ve seen enough weird hardware fatigue happen that I find Hastings’s engine going so far to be plausible, but I don’t have enough specific information to make even a semi-educated guess about this case.
WP FancyZoom is a great plugin and probably one of the easiest I ever used. It works beautifully on Safari and Google Chrome, but there’s a small hitch on Firefox and Opera. On these two browsers, a white box appears behind the top of the popup. If you have an explanation of how I can get rid of the box it would be greatly appreciated. The link is http://www.jttestsite.com/the-oppy-family/ and click on any of the boxes with the cartoon characters to see what I mean.
Thanks.
Joe
I don’t, unfortunately. I didn’t write the underlying code. I just wrapped it in an easy-to-use WordPress plugin.
Dear Stephen,
I read your comment on the Michael Hastings car. It was written in the end of June. About two weeks ago the security footage of Mozza appeared online. This looks to me as an explosion on impact. http://vimeo.com/71132682
Can you tell me what you think, and if this changes your opinion on the Hastings case?
Thank you for your answer in advance.
Kind regards,
Rob
What’s shown in that video doesn’t look like an explosion to me at all. If it were an explosion, I’d expect a much bigger jump in brightness followed by a falling-off. The camera’s a low-light one — notice how bright the car’s taillights look and how much blooming/streaking you get just from the taillights. A quick-starting fire could easily produce what’s seen on that video.