Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sledding athletes are taking their lives

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 241 posts

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#21

Post by gonzo41 »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #11
gonzo41 wrote: post #2

This is a pretty sad article. I wonder if they've ever considered g-suits to mitigate the pressure on the body. I'm not sure if it'd be effective but fighter pilots have a pretty similar set of extremes that they work in.

It seems like the pressure isn't the main issue, the vibration/impact is. Better helmet padding may be able to help significantly here.

I was thinking along the lines that putting high G pressure on your circulatory system is probably putting a lot of stress on the brain that otherwise wound be there. The sled head they talk about seems like it's almost mild hypooxia or something.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#22

Post by matz1 »

gnramires wrote: post #19

This seems totally unacceptable. We should stop having this sport in the Olympics (implicitly supporting this madness) -- of course athletes are free to do as they chose, but we cannot encourage such pointless self-destruction and misery. An alternative to save the sport is completely redesign it to limit maximum accelerations. Usually injuries follow power laws so I doubt even that much reduction would be necessary…

>pointless self-destruction and misery.

Maybe its pointless for you, fair enough but it can be meaningfull for other people, i myself think it's interesting.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#23

Post by Swizec »

selectodude wrote: post #20
CGamesPlay wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on helmet design, but surely you can absorb that force elsewhere, as long as the acceleration on the skull is damped? Degenerate case: a car's airbag does not go between my brain and my skull, yet it does prevent my brain from slamming into my skull.

No it doesn't, it prevents your skull from slamming into the steering wheel, lowering the forces inside your skull due to the longer time for deceleration is simply a side effect. Brain buckets are awesome for keeping your skull in one piece. Always have been.

Wouldn’t the fact that your skull decelerates slower against an airbag than against a steering wheel mean that your brain hits your skull with less force?

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#24

Post by elliottkember »

Swizec wrote: post #23
selectodude wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't, it prevents your skull from slamming into the steering wheel, lowering the forces inside your skull due to the longer time for deceleration is simply a side effect. Brain buckets are awesome for keeping your skull in one piece. Always have been.

Wouldn’t the fact that your skull decelerates slower against an airbag than against a steering wheel mean that your brain hits your skull with less force?

Yes, that's what it does. It's not zero, but it's definitely less. But you probably only hit an airbag a couple of times max over the course of your lifetime, whereas on the field you'll hit your head the whole game. And I don't know how you could put an airbag in a helmet, there's not enough space to slow your impact

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#25

Post by runawaybottle »

mirimir wrote: post #10
irjustin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how... how did you come to that conclusion?

Not OP, but I'm guessing that they think athletes just contribute mass.

Generally they also believe playing/watching sports is mostly pointless and appeal to lesser intelligences.

Apparently they’ve never done a thorough exploration of existentialism or nihilism given how smart they are.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#26

Post by nimih »

pengaru wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

> On Feb. 22, 2013, Morris attached an accelerometer to his helmet, then launched his body down a 1,500-meter track at the sliding center in Whistler, British Columbia, which is considered the fastest track in the world and was a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Bobsleigh has been a feature of the Winter Olympics since 1924 [1]. Yet it might have taken until 2013 for someone to measure its g force on its athletes'…

Except measuring G-forces acting on a helmet doesn't directly relate to the forces acting on the head within it.

Why not? To me (a layperson in the physics of helmets and brains), they would seem to be quite directly related, especially when the cause of the gees is not related to an impact.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#27

Post by [deleted] »

pengaru wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

> On Feb. 22, 2013, Morris attached an accelerometer to his helmet, then launched his body down a 1,500-meter track at the sliding center in Whistler, British Columbia, which is considered the fastest track in the world and was a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Bobsleigh has been a feature of the Winter Olympics since 1924 [1]. Yet it might have taken until 2013 for someone to measure its g force on its athletes'…

Except measuring G-forces acting on a helmet doesn't directly relate to the forces acting on the head within it.

[deleted]

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#28

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

pengaru wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

> On Feb. 22, 2013, Morris attached an accelerometer to his helmet, then launched his body down a 1,500-meter track at the sliding center in Whistler, British Columbia, which is considered the fastest track in the world and was a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Bobsleigh has been a feature of the Winter Olympics since 1924 [1]. Yet it might have taken until 2013 for someone to measure its g force on its athletes'…

Except measuring G-forces acting on a helmet doesn't directly relate to the forces acting on the head within it.

Do you think there's a material inside the helmet that can stop gravity?

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#30

Post by ashtonkem »

nimih wrote: post #26
pengaru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except measuring G-forces acting on a helmet doesn't directly relate to the forces acting on the head within it.

Why not? To me (a layperson in the physics of helmets and brains), they would seem to be quite directly related, especially when the cause of the gees is not related to an impact.

Helmets are padded, deform, or have suspension systems to decelerate any impulse that the helmet takes. This should cause a very different g-force spike between what the shell of the helmet experiences, and what the wearer experiences.

If the helmet didn't decelerate any impulse to the head, the range of impacts that it could theoretically protect the wearer from would actually be quite narrow.

Post reply on HN