Building a Better Bike Helmet Out of Paper 317
An anonymous reader writes "Inspired by nature, a London man believes the solution to safer bike helmets is to build them out of paper. '"The animal that stood out was the woodpecker. It pecks at about ten times per second and every time it pecks it sustains the same amount of force as us crashing at 50 miles per hour," says Surabhi. "It's the only bird in the world where the skull and the beak are completely disjointed, and there's a soft corrugated cartilage in the middle that absorbs all the impact and stops it from getting a headache." In order to mimic the woodpecker's crumple zone, Anirudha turned to a cheap and easily accessible source — paper. He engineered it into a double-layer of honeycomb that could then be cut and constructed into a functioning helmet. "What you end up with is with tiny little airbags throughout the helmet," he says.'"
Re:Bike helmet? (Score:5, Funny)
And most of you survived to adulthood -- although, as your post illustrates, some did suffer lasting cognitive issues.
Overlooking the obvious? (Score:5, Funny)
After RTFA, it seems that the most obvious material to make the helmet from is woodpecker skulls. Didn't anyone else get that?
Re:Bike helmet? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, given we know the forces and situations involved: Helmets are clearly only addressing the symptom of the bigger problem.
The solution is to correct the design flaw and build structures where the chest houses the brain instead of a ridiculous appendage.
If input lag was a problem then why put the visual cortex in the back of the skull, and motor cortex so far from the feet?
Let's upgrade to impact resistant brains and bodies that can survive in the vacuum of space while we're at it.
Intelligently Designed... Pah!
Re:Bike helmet? (Score:3, Funny)
I have a Request for Enhancement: please put my balls on the inside ;-)