Science made a big impact on me at the weekend. It started with the combination of particle physics and neuroscience, when the reflected photons from the oncoming Skoda struck my retinae and an urgent message started travelling through my brain. Then Newtonian mechanics came into play, as the momentum carried the car down the hill even after I'd taken my foot off the accelerator.The running water covering the road on an otherwise dry day can be explained by physical geography — or perhaps the agricultural science of overflowing drainage ditches.
As my biological self contracted muscles and stomped on the brake, fluid mechanics came into play, and my little Mini Cooper started aquaplaning. I believe some other muscles may have tightened up around that point, too.
My faith in engineering science was dented by the failure of the ABS to do anything useful. It was restored a second or so later, though, as Mini met Skoda and the same kind of micro electro-mechanical accelerometer that senses you waving your Wiimote around told one of the car's on-board computers that we were all in trouble.
Thinking faster than the useless bag of biology occupying the front seat, the computer took a millisecond to assess the situation, then decided to play with its chemistry set, firing the explosives in the seat-belt pre-tensioners, and setting off both airbags.
This heralded the arrival of acoustics, specifically acoustic shock. Three days on, I still have a ringing in my left ear where some frequency response used to be. If you want to know how loud it is in car when it's busy remodelling its interior into a bouncy castle, take a look at this YouTube video of an airbag detonating. Now imagine sharing an enclosed space with two of the things.
And — like any good chemistry experiment — airbags stink.
Psychology would shed light on how we've managed to suppress our fight-or-flight reaction since we've moved out of caves and into cities. In particular, it would explain how we can stumble out of a violent, life-threatening encounter with another human being and politely ask them if they're okay while our adrenal glands carry on dumping Ug-hit-enemy-with-rock hormones into our bloodstream.
Luckily, both I and my co-crashee escaped injury, so it was back to classical mechanics as we shoved our vehicles out of the single-track road before anyone else joined our impromptu science fair. Phonology tagged the nice man who came to see what all the noise was about as a Welsh local, and his offering his driveway as temporary parking confirmed it.
After a little time to calm down and exchange details, it was all physics and electronics as we phoned friends and breakdown services, and I cursed low-earth-orbit satellites and the applied mathematics of in-car navigation systems. If my sat-nav hadn't mentioned that there was a more interesting way to get back to Bristol than staying on the A48, then my Sunday afternoon would have involved significantly less scientific interest.
And now we're left with economics clashing with the forensic psychology of eyewitness recall, as our insurance companies each try to figure out how to get the best result from their zero-sum game.
I just hope they manage to come to some agreement before we all get the chance to study the Big Crunch…
Car image courtesy of Steve Ford Elliot.
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