3 ms·

If you built a scale model of a good egg drop rig for the size of a person would it protect them from jumping off a building without breaking anything?

dbbolton 11y ago
Here's a med student's two cents: I doubt it simply because you can't realistically prevent deceleration injury to the internal organs. With an egg drop, you pretty much just have to worry about the integrity of the shell, but with a person there are a lot more factors at play. The first example I can think of off the top of my head is in MVAs. Modern cars are designed to absorb a lot of the momentum from collisions and minimize injury to passengers, but that isn't always enough to save lives. You're not a solid body. You are basically a big blob of salt water that happens to contain some hard bones and ligaments mixed in with vulnerable organs. Even if you can protect the blob, those organs can still move around inside it. Let's say you slam into another car head-on. The frame of your car absorbs a good bit of the energy, but your body still "wants" to keep going forward. Then your seat belt stops your thorax, but your heart and major vessels keep going and slam into your ribs, sternum, etc. Best case scenario, you'll walk away with a minor myocardial contusion and possibly develop a dysrhythmia, but if you're not so lucky, your descending aorta may actually be ripped by your ligamentum arteriosum and you'll mostly likely bleed out. Your head isn't as restrained as your thorax in a car, but even if it were your brain can still move around and slam into your skull (which can lead to traumatic brain injuries like concussion, diffuse axonal injury, cerebral laceration, etc.).
- izzydata 11y ago
  Thanks, that was informative.
semi-extrinsic 11y ago
Mythbusters tried this, wrapping a person in bubblewrap, and could drop Adam from 15 ft. But the limit they hit was that the weight of the bubblewrap they were putting around him was becoming uncomfortably high. Part of the reason why you can't just take the egg result and scale it up is called the square-cube-law.
oberstein 11y ago
It would need to be fairly ridiculously sized. Far easier to just cushion the ground and have the 'rig' waiting at the impact site. e.g. skydiving into a bunch of cardboard boxes with no parachute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLDSg8B4Cxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLDSg8B4Cxo

dbbolton 11y ago

Here's a med student's two cents: I doubt it simply because you can't realistically prevent deceleration injury to the internal organs. With an egg drop, you pretty much just have to worry about the integrity of the shell, but with a person there are a lot more factors at play. The first example I can think of off the top of my head is in MVAs. Modern cars are designed to absorb a lot of the momentum from collisions and minimize injury to passengers, but that isn't always enough to save lives. You're not a solid body. You are basically a big blob of salt water that happens to contain some hard bones and ligaments mixed in with vulnerable organs. Even if you can protect the blob, those organs can still move around inside it. Let's say you slam into another car head-on. The frame of your car absorbs a good bit of the energy, but your body still "wants" to keep going forward. Then your seat belt stops your thorax, but your heart and major vessels keep going and slam into your ribs, sternum, etc. Best case scenario, you'll walk away with a minor myocardial contusion and possibly develop a dysrhythmia, but if you're not so lucky, your descending aorta may actually be ripped by your ligamentum arteriosum and you'll mostly likely bleed out. Your head isn't as restrained as your thorax in a car, but even if it were your brain can still move around and slam into your skull (which can lead to traumatic brain injuries like concussion, diffuse axonal injury, cerebral laceration, etc.).

izzydata 11y ago
Thanks, that was informative.

semi-extrinsic 11y ago

Mythbusters tried this, wrapping a person in bubblewrap, and could drop Adam from 15 ft. But the limit they hit was that the weight of the bubblewrap they were putting around him was becoming uncomfortably high. Part of the reason why you can't just take the egg result and scale it up is called the square-cube-law.

oberstein 11y ago

It would need to be fairly ridiculously sized. Far easier to just cushion the ground and have the 'rig' waiting at the impact site. e.g. skydiving into a bunch of cardboard boxes with no parachute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLDSg8B4Cxo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLDSg8B4Cxo