I was supposed to have my site visit on the 19 of May to the 22, but then I got sick and we had to cancel. Fortunately, everyone was so nice and agreed to reschedule. We ended up with the solution of going from the 27 of May to the 30. I have just completed my visit, and I think it is one of the best trips I have ever been on!
A month ago, I heard about this place called the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab from my mom. She asked if I wanted to do my site visit there. I said OK, but I didn’t think it would be fun, or that educational. Later she told me cool things about it, like, “They use fake heads, put helmets on them and then run various tests on various machines, like a giant pendulum.” I started to think, “Wow! This place seems really cool!” We communicated with this guy named Barry Miller, who works there and set everything up for us. He sent us maps and other things that he said might help me with my Capstone.
Here is the map of the campus:
After a long, nine-hour drive, we finally arrived in Virginia. We had to eat and go straight to bed. When we woke up, we got ready and Barry took us in a golf cart to the lab. The second I walked in, I saw two walls with cut open helmets, showing the foam and design. I also saw all of the testing machines, the undergrad, grad and doctorate students working there, and the fake heads. Some helmets had sensors in them to track impact. There was so much to see! At the entrance of the lab, the two walls with the helmets had both hockey and football helmets. In front were the desks and the test machines. There was also a place to test mouth guards.
There are gel helmets, foam helmets, fluid helmets (the fluid mimics the spinal fluid that protects your brain) bike helmets, and the sensors helmets I talked about earlier. Now, this place not only has all these types of helmets, but they also have mouth guards with sensors, cars they made from carbon fiber, and the first ever drone to deliver a Chipotle meal!
When they test a helmet, it takes a lot of preparation. First, they have to put the sensors in the fake heads. This seems simple, but it takes about 15 minutes. After doing that, they have to decide which helmet they are testing. They put it on the dummy and open the correct computer program. Then the procedure is different depending on which machine you’re using. There is a magnetized one were you put another head without a sensor. Then the magnet forces one head into the helmet head they are testing. There is another one that test bike helmets and the helmet falls from ten feet in the air onto concrete. Another one has the same concept as the bike helmets, but it simulates falling on the turf or ice. Another one mimics being tackled. It does so by using gas to push forward a metal bar into the helmet. There is another one that is is almost the same as the falling ones, but this one is connected to a bar and simulates falling backward. And my favorite one is when the head is on a bar and a pendulum falls and hits it. After each test, the impact data is sent to the computer. They do many tests in many different places, and then they rate the helmets. Many of the machines are gravity based. This is because gravity is very reliable and does not change, so their answers are more accurate than when using another method, as gas.
The second day I was there, my mouth dropped as I heard what they said. “You can create your own helmet!” I was crazy excited! They gave me an outer shell of a helmet with velcro on the inside, and a box of foam pieces of different sizes. They tested an actual helmet to use as a control, and its score was 40Gs. The abbreviation “G” stands for gravity, which is a constant force os 9.8 meters per second, squared. A score that’s 65+ can mean you have a concussion, so a lower score is better. My first design was soft foam touching the shell, then hard foam to stop the fall, then soft foam touching the head to make the impact hurt less. We tested my helmet and … it scored 38Gs! I was so happy! Unfortunately, for all my other tests I had crazy ideas like, “I’ll put peppermints in it! The peppermint will crush, absorbing energy!” All my other scores ended up being 50 to 62Gs. This experience showed me that a lot of padding doesn’t make a good helmet, but the right design does.
While I was there, I was lucky enough to do a second interview. I interviewed an undergraduate student named Baily (last name here), who works in the lab as a part of his studies. When he was in high school he started playing football and got two concussions. When he came to Virginia Tech for college, he started working with the football team as the equipment manager. One part of his job was placing impact sensors in helmets. Then he took a class about it with Dr. Stefan Duma to get a better understanding of the sensors. He asked if he could work in the lab and help out, and Dr. Stefan Dumas said yes! He also explained the testing process to me. He also told me that mouth guards not only protect your teeth, but they also protect your jaw from breaking and injuring your skull. We also discussed what he believed the future of helmets to be.
In conclusion, not only was this a fun trip but it was also educational. I was able to get a lot of information for my Capstone project. I was able to meet people with the same interests as me and learn things that are not necessarily connected with my Capstone but were still really cool and fascinating. Overall, I think my site visit was a huge success.
I really liked how you added parentheses into places that were new to most people, and how you described everything you saw and thought. I enjoyed reading your post, mainly because it was kind of humorous, when you thought about peppermint helmets.