The brain is a supervillain's most valuable resource. It schemes, it plans, it designs, and it generates the jealousy or hatred or whatever emotion drives them to commit atrocities. And in the case of some supervillains, it's their only resource! The Lobe is really putting himself out there with a totally unprotected brain atop his body, but at least he HAS a body to help him move that thing around. Some villains are not so lucky either through genetic craziness or tragic accidents. These guys have no bodies, and are organically nothing but superintelligent brain matter. So of course their superintelligence understood the urgency of protecting the little gray cells, and they built robot suits to deal with that. Krang is shown here in what looks like a giant, ugly baby robot suit, and while the Brain always gets a new robot to house his mind after being decapitated by the forces of good, we see him here in only his basic life support chamber. But even in this more vulnerable state, he still has a huge, intelligent, and compassionate gorilla at his side called Monsieur Mallah to take care of him and find him a new robot body. Robotman has a much more slick-looking ride for his lobes (probably because he's actually a superhero, and they need to look good). Don't be fooled by his resemblance to Iron Man, though. There's not a whole human in that suit, just the brain of former racecar driver Cliff Steele. Regular humans are also very committed to protecting our cerebrums and cerebellums! We have the advantage of intact skulls to house our brain matter, but we still need a little help from helmets in contact sports or high speed situations like riding a motorcycle. But there's bad news for humans and supers alike: Helmets don't actually prevent concussions or brain damage! This may sound completely oxymoronic to some people, but it does make sense. Helmets are still extremely successful at protecting your skull, and very valuable because of that. It's much easier to buy a new helmet after the plastic cracks in yours, but harder to fix cracks in your bones. The thing is that helmets only protect the skull. The brain inside still moves around due to the space around it filled with cerebrospinal fluid, and the collisions between your brain and the inside of your skull are what causes concussions. This topic is discussed in a recent Science Friday podcast. So how can nature help us solve this problem? Let's start by taking a look at an animal whose head can withstand 100 times the g-force it takes to give an athlete a concussion without so much as a little dizziness. Scientists have been studying woodpecker anatomy to find out how it can handle such fast deceleration when it's banging its head 20 times a second. The woodpecker is equipped with shock-absorbing spongy layers all around its brain, and a very important section of spongy cartilage between the beak and the skull so some of the impact can be dissipated before it reaches the brain. They also don't have as much fluid around the brain, giving it less wiggle room to move around and hurt itself in confusion. This has inspired special systems of shock absorbers to protect valuable electronics like black boxes in planes or satellite debris falling from space. That's all well and good for electronics, but what about our own neural circuitry? Well, unfortunately we can't change our own skull anatomy to be more like that of the woodpecker (probably), but there is some work being done on more shock-absorbing helmets. One such venture created a cardboard-lined bicycle helmet after the creator suffered a concussion himself while cycling. The cardboard has a honeycomb like structure full of hexagonal cavities that give it strength. The fact that it's made up of cardboard and air makes it very lightweight and relatively cheap to produce. And since the cardboard is made from recycled paper, it's a WAY more environmental cushioning material than the current polystyrene petroleum products used in commercial bike helmets. What a win for bioinspiration! Please protect your heads! References:
Yoon, S.-H., & Park, S. (2011). A mechanical analysis of woodpecker drumming and its application to shock-absorbing systems. Bioinspiration biomimetics, 6(1), 016003.
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Alanna DurkinExploring the realm of biologically inspired design one superhero example at a time, with some other natural sciences mixed in. Archives
September 2016
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