When it comes to designing a helmet, physics plays an important role. Newton’s second law of motion demonstrates the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration, explaining that the force is equal to the mass of an object times the acceleration. If we apply this rule to football, it can be concluded that although the mass (of the football player) is unlikely to be changed, the acceleration can be. The new Zero1 helmet was specifically designed to address the acceleration a player experiences during impact in order to reduce these sheering forces (VICIS, 2016).
Even though this helmet is brand new, the Zero1 has been tested in many supervised and controlled settings using players from the NFL, the National Collegiate Athletic Association …show more content…
Advancement in Medical Equipment As stated previously, helmets might protect against skull fractures, but they are useless in preventing further brain damage. Research by Guskiewicz and Mihalik (2011), state that “sport-related concussion typically results from forces directly imparted to the head or indirectly through the neck, resulting in a combination of rapid acceleration and deceleration. Such forces create linear and/or rotational acceleration/deceleration on the brain.” This movement of the brain back and forth is commonly referred to as slosh (Guskiewicz & Mihalik, 2011).
On average, a football player can sustain up to 75 g of linear acceleration during a hit, resulting in this slosh-induced injury. However, there was no scientific evidence that explains how a woodpecker, who experiences hits of over 1000 g while pecking a tree does not experience any type of head trauma. In 2011, a team of researchers launched a scientific study to investigate this phenomenon. The researchers looked at the behavior of the great spotted woodpecker versus that of the Eurasian hoopoe. These birds were observed using two different high-speed cameras, each using 2,000 frames per second. Pecking force was measured using a force/torque sensor that was implanted in the cages of these birds. Researchers specifically traced the bird’s abdomen, eyelid, cranial bone, and the tip of the beak using micro-CT scanning (Wang et al., …show more content…
Three years later, a cervical collar was created that mimicked the woodpecker’s anatomy. This new collar was tested out on two different groups of adult male mice. The purpose of this study was to see if slosh mitigation is successful in reducing “neural degeneration, gliosis, and neuroinflammation” (Turner et al., 2012). Before injury was inflicted, one group of mice wore the collar that purposely compresses the internal jugular vein while the other group did not. Each group of mice was exposed to the same type of high acceleration impact. Seven days after sustaining the injury, both groups of mice were killed in order to perform an autopsy on the brain. The mice that wore the collar “had a 48.7%-59.1% reduction in degenerative neurons, a 36.8%-45.7% decrease in reactive astrocytes, and a 44.1%-65.3% reduction in microglial activation” (Turner et al., 2012). These results proved that this collar could successfully reduce brain
Even though this helmet is brand new, the Zero1 has been tested in many supervised and controlled settings using players from the NFL, the National Collegiate Athletic Association …show more content…
Advancement in Medical Equipment As stated previously, helmets might protect against skull fractures, but they are useless in preventing further brain damage. Research by Guskiewicz and Mihalik (2011), state that “sport-related concussion typically results from forces directly imparted to the head or indirectly through the neck, resulting in a combination of rapid acceleration and deceleration. Such forces create linear and/or rotational acceleration/deceleration on the brain.” This movement of the brain back and forth is commonly referred to as slosh (Guskiewicz & Mihalik, 2011).
On average, a football player can sustain up to 75 g of linear acceleration during a hit, resulting in this slosh-induced injury. However, there was no scientific evidence that explains how a woodpecker, who experiences hits of over 1000 g while pecking a tree does not experience any type of head trauma. In 2011, a team of researchers launched a scientific study to investigate this phenomenon. The researchers looked at the behavior of the great spotted woodpecker versus that of the Eurasian hoopoe. These birds were observed using two different high-speed cameras, each using 2,000 frames per second. Pecking force was measured using a force/torque sensor that was implanted in the cages of these birds. Researchers specifically traced the bird’s abdomen, eyelid, cranial bone, and the tip of the beak using micro-CT scanning (Wang et al., …show more content…
Three years later, a cervical collar was created that mimicked the woodpecker’s anatomy. This new collar was tested out on two different groups of adult male mice. The purpose of this study was to see if slosh mitigation is successful in reducing “neural degeneration, gliosis, and neuroinflammation” (Turner et al., 2012). Before injury was inflicted, one group of mice wore the collar that purposely compresses the internal jugular vein while the other group did not. Each group of mice was exposed to the same type of high acceleration impact. Seven days after sustaining the injury, both groups of mice were killed in order to perform an autopsy on the brain. The mice that wore the collar “had a 48.7%-59.1% reduction in degenerative neurons, a 36.8%-45.7% decrease in reactive astrocytes, and a 44.1%-65.3% reduction in microglial activation” (Turner et al., 2012). These results proved that this collar could successfully reduce brain