Science of Football Better Helmets
Ambience: Football game
Ramirez: You can think of it as bubble wrap for the brain.
Football helmets were created to prevent players from fracturing their skulls. They accomplished that goal, but according to engineers, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
Ramirez: Today’s football helmet clearly isn’t doing the job in terms of preventing concussions. What it does is it prevents the skull from fracturing, but it can’t do anything to mitigate the brain inside from sloshing around and hitting the inside of the skull.
Ainissa Ramirez is an engineer and the co-author of Newton’s Football the Science Behind America’s Game.
Ramirez: We talked to Bill Simpson, who has been making helmets for NASCAR for a long time, and the helmets that they use in NASCAR are very different from the helmets that we use in the NFL. In fact, the materials that we use in the NFL have been banned from NASCAR since the 1970s. The issue that they see, is that the materials that we use in the NFL don’t absorb impact as well as the ones that they’ve designed.
So, if we compare the NASCAR helmet to the NFL helmet, the NFL helmet is made out of polycarbonate, which is a solid piece. The NASCAR shell is a composite. A composite is made out of very thin layers that we can’t see, but it is a little smarter because each one of those layers can handle forces a little different transfer force to other parts of the material. And so, it can mitigate impact a little bit better than a solid monolithic shell.
So, it’s a little smarter, if you will, than a solid shell, which can only survive one kind of blow.
Why aren’t we using those kinds of helmets? I have no idea. I am here as a scientist to point out we have better options.
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