Re: Henry LaMothe

[Wolfgang Rueckner <rueckner@FAS.HARVARD.EDU>]

According to the Wayne State University concussion tolerance curve (see
Phys Today, March '87, page 43), 100 g's can only be tolerated (by the
brain) for 5 or 6 milliseconds.  25 ms is much longer that than!  Wolfgang
Rueckner




> At 20:57 11/2/00 -0600, you wrote:
> > > This is in the 6th edition ofHalliday, Resnick,
> > > Walker Fundamentals. They give height as 30 m,
> > > water depth as 30 cm and say that M. LaMothe did
> > > his act until he was in his 90's.
> >
> > This sounds incredible.  Whatever speed he reaches in the fall he has to
> > loose again in the tub, so v^2 = 2 a(1) x(1) = 2 a(2) x(2) , or
> >
> >     a(2) = g x(1)/x(2) = g  30m/0.3m = 100 g
> >
> > So his average acceleration is 100 g during the stop.  Is that survivable?
> > He's going from 90 km/hr to 0 in 0.025 s!
> >
> >
> > Tim
>
> Seat belts are rated for 30g accelerations, if I recall.
> The pressure that represents, if uniformly distributed over
> the body length, is quite a bit greater than that posed by
> the belly flop in question. I seem to recall the threshold for
> death is over 200g if uniformly distributed.
>
>
> brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>  Altus OK
>                Eureka!