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<blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 1978568" data-attributes="member: 5328">That's right. It takes a given amount of energy to produce a given deformation in a given material.Sure, a bullet of high energy may miss a vital organ. And a slow-moving train may exert only forces that are less than the strengths of the materials of a body, so that one is pushed out of the way rather than injured. Circumstances may allow that much of the energy of an impact will go into, say, deforming the crumple zones of your car, so that less goes into deforming your ribcage. So, it is possible that the energy that goes into debilitating deformations of a person's body my be less than the total energy of a collision, but it can never be more.If successive blows of a fist or blugeon do damage that [is random but consistent and] adds up linearly, it is consistent that falling damge ought to be [random but with mean] proportional to distance fallen.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Agback, post: 1978568, member: 5328"] That's right. It takes a given amount of energy to produce a given deformation in a given material. Sure, a bullet of high energy may miss a vital organ. And a slow-moving train may exert only forces that are less than the strengths of the materials of a body, so that one is pushed out of the way rather than injured. Circumstances may allow that much of the energy of an impact will go into, say, deforming the crumple zones of your car, so that less goes into deforming your ribcage. So, it is possible that the energy that goes into debilitating deformations of a person's body my be less than the total energy of a collision, but it can never be more. If successive blows of a fist or blugeon do damage that [is random but consistent and] adds up linearly, it is consistent that falling damge ought to be [random but with mean] proportional to distance fallen. [/QUOTE]

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