"Which would hurt worse? A full beer bottle to the head or an empty one?"

It seems like you asked one specific question, but there are really two things you are interested in:

1) which would hurt more?

2) which would do more damage?

In the first case, there’s no way to say. The full bottle might hurt you more than an empty one, but someone else (with a different shaped head, thicker skin, etc.) might feel more pain from the empty bottle.

There’s also the question of whether or not the force was delivered exactly the same way in all cases (angle, velocity, point of impact, etc.). Unless you’re going to build a "beer-bottle-over-the-head-O-matic"(tm) the characteristics of the impact are going to vary each time, which will affect how much pain is inflicted.

So...there’ really no way to tell which will hurt more, because there are subjective as well as mechanical factors that would have to be dealt with.

As to which would cause more damage? Well, given two exactly the same attacks (velocity, angle, point of impact) then the full bottle is certainly going to cause more damage. As you correctly note, it masses more, and therefore carries greater impact energy.

That covers the damage from the actual impact.

One important remaining factor is whether the beer bottle shatters. If it shatters on impact, and the jagged pieces or remnant still in the attacker’s hand retain enough downward force to gouge the scalp...then there will be additional damage. In practice though, whether the bottle shatters has as much to do again with point of impact, shape of head, etc. as it does with being full or empty.

All things being equal, the full bottle is actually more likely to shatter given two identical impacts -precisely because it masses more and the container therefore has to absorb not only additional energy from an impact at a given velocity on its exterior surface, but also deal with an accelerated mass (the beer) stressing it from the inside as well.

So, with those caveats - I’d go with the full bottle being the less desirable one to be hit with.

The bottle that would be filled would hurt more because there is more weight in the bottle. So first you would get hit in the head with a hard weighted oblect, then eventually the glass would break and that would stab you. That sounds more painful lthan just getting glkass to the head

but still

OUCH!!!

I wouldn't want either, but I would think, a full bottle would soften the blow, because the beer can wash the wound out. lol

Then again an empty one, because its not as heavy.

Chocpudding,

Force = mass  X acceleration

Assuming that the striking arm has sufficient power that the bottle reaches  a maximum speed regard less of the weight.  This is supported by measuring the speeds that professional bowlers can achieve in various professional sports, in baseball the average speed is about 90 miles per hour and about the same for cricket despite the latter ball havening more mass.

If the speed is constant then the acceleration or in this case the deceleration would be the same. Since acceleration would be constant the force would be directly proportional to the mass of the bottle.

Or to take this to an extreme when out on a road you’d rather be hit by a motor bike traveling at 30 miles per hour than an 18 wheel truck at the same speed.

ask for volunteers.  then you can throw a full bottle of beer and see how it hurts.  then do the same with an empty beer bottle.  maybe you ought not to do that. see if you could get two dummies (manaquins) then do your testing.  frankly i think if you throw a bottle of beer at the head it would hurt more than a empty bottle.  why don't you look on the internat to find out.  maybe, go on www.askville.com. ha ha