> [...] absorbed the kinetic energy caused by an impact almost 30 times better than liners currently used in US military helmets.
That's not quite the same thing as claimed in the headline. Of course there's a correlation between the two, but I see no reason to assume (and the article certainly doesn't provide any evidence) that an x-fold decrease in kinetic energy delivered to the head translates to an x-fold decrease in the likelihood of concussions. Most complex systems respond to external inputs in a highly nonlinear fashion.
Yeah. How good are US military helmets good at absorbing impacts? I’d like to know how this compares to helmets that meet Snell SA2020, B-95, ECE 22.06, or other more widely used standards that people use widely.
Concussions don’t have a particularly objective diagnosis or a very clean phase transition between “concussion” and “not concussion”, they are more so continuous with a soft floor, and they do get progressively worse with vague intensity of injury. It’s not really until your brain starts bleeding and such that there are clear diagnostic signs and there are definite but more vague long term effects from lesser concussions.
Reducing kinetic energy is exactly the kind of metric you can take in absence of any others.
Kinetic energy is definitely the better design and test metric. But you still can't claim a linear relationship without large - yet controlled studies. And if it is as good as they, a large/long trial could be unethical versus just widely deploying it and collecting the data you can. It is just as likely it is only twice as good at preventing concussions. The headline is almost click-bait.
Right, a concussion is caused by sudden acceleration of the skull relative to the brain. The acceleration is the result of momemtum transfer, not energy transfer, and momentum is always conserved. Therefore, to first order, the key factors should be the mass of the projectile, the speed of the projectile, and the combined mass of the skull+helmet.
Spreading the impulse over a slightly longer time with energy absorbers should help a little, but im skeptical of the size of the effect without making the helmet significantly larger. Given the comparison with military helmets, It sounds like this design might be more about bleeding energy from projectiles to prevent penetration, so the sports claims seem confusing.
Energy absorption (if full) means that the skull won't bounce back from the cushioning. That would send it toward the brain, making the brain-skull impact worse.
I remember buying a motorcycle helmet, and there are a couple different standards to protect your head, yet they are almost incompatible with each other. Maybe it is better now.
There’s a lot of sportspeople who aren’t athletes. I average close to 20 hours of sportsing per week, but I am no athlete. An athlete is someone who competes for realzies, maybe even money.
Pretty much every sportsperson who wears a helmet is an athlete, no?
It's not the golfers or bowlers who are wearing helmets. It's the American football and ice hockey players. Even F1 drivers need to be in top athletic condition.
As a general rule not all sportspeople are athletes, but for this article "athlete" does feel like the more natural word.
In Icelandic athletes translates to íþróttafólk which literally means sportspeople. So to me this sounds like an Icelander that doesn’t know good English. It’s probably a perfectly cromulent word though.
[Cromulent] was introduced in "Lisa the Iconoclast," an episode of the Fox animated television series The Simpsons that first aired on February 18, 1996. Coinage of the word has been attributed to the television writer David X. Cohen by Bill Oakley, one of the series' producers, in a commentary to the DVD release of the series.
In comparison to "sportsperson", "athlete" has slightly more of a connotation of proficiency or seriousness. "sportsperson" more plainly means anyone engaging in sport.
Can also include motorcyclists/cyclists, which aren't necessarily considered "athletes". Maybe "recreational use" might had been more apt.
Really wondering if this can be combined and standardized through ECE 22.06/SNELL/MIPS. ECE is probably the best bet for testing something like this, SNELL is too strict in its testing experimentation.
I think this might apply to people who do a variety of activities that might not fit into traditional genres, like motorcycling, horseback riding, ATVs, skiing, skateboarding, scooter/cycle commuting, military/police, etc
HUGE for games that wear helmets - not so much for boxing, soccer, rugby and Australian Rules Football, none of which wear helmets and all of which have significant issues with brain injury /concussion.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 88.9 ms ] threadThat's not quite the same thing as claimed in the headline. Of course there's a correlation between the two, but I see no reason to assume (and the article certainly doesn't provide any evidence) that an x-fold decrease in kinetic energy delivered to the head translates to an x-fold decrease in the likelihood of concussions. Most complex systems respond to external inputs in a highly nonlinear fashion.
>U.S. Troops Still Train on Weapons With Known Risk of Brain Injury
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-...
https://archive.ph/WDlpR
>The Army Said Tank Blasts Don’t Harm Troops. His Case Raises Doubts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/army-blast-safety-brai...
https://archive.ph/WZRJQ
Reducing kinetic energy is exactly the kind of metric you can take in absence of any others.
Spreading the impulse over a slightly longer time with energy absorbers should help a little, but im skeptical of the size of the effect without making the helmet significantly larger. Given the comparison with military helmets, It sounds like this design might be more about bleeding energy from projectiles to prevent penetration, so the sports claims seem confusing.
EDIT:
https://agvsport.com/blog/which-helmet-standard-is-the-best-...
Pretty much every sportsperson who wears a helmet is an athlete, no?
It's not the golfers or bowlers who are wearing helmets. It's the American football and ice hockey players. Even F1 drivers need to be in top athletic condition.
As a general rule not all sportspeople are athletes, but for this article "athlete" does feel like the more natural word.
Complete aside, but since we are participating in linguistic tomfoolery, this feels appropriate:
The expression should be “doesn’t have good English”, or perhaps, “doesn’t know English well”.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cromulent
Really wondering if this can be combined and standardized through ECE 22.06/SNELL/MIPS. ECE is probably the best bet for testing something like this, SNELL is too strict in its testing experimentation.