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Topic: High School Student makes Discovery (Read 236 times)

Addams
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High School Student makes Discovery
« on: Apr 2^nd, 2003, 3:01pm »

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I am going to post this in its entirety. It's very cool. Seems so logical but until someone takes the time to think it through and demonstrate it. Also she and her dad presented it together at a conference. How cool is that!

Taken from http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993578

Head injuries' double whammy explained


19:00 02 April 03

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

A high school student has helped solve a long-standing mystery about head injuries. During falls or traffic accidents, the brain is usually injured in two places - one where the skull strikes the external surface (coup), and another diametrically opposite to it (contrecoup).


Explaining brain injuries
The most popular theory to explain this is that the brain first collides against the skull near the point of impact, and then rebounds, hitting the skull at the back. But this does not explain why the contrecoup injury is often more pronounced than the coup.

Now Laura Drew, a student at Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio, has shown why, with help from her father William Drew, chief of neurology at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. "It was my idea, but it was my daughter who got around to it," says Drew.

She built a model consisting of a tough transparent container filled with a liquid of the same density as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The "brain" is a balloon filled with a saline solution four per cent less dense than the CSF, tethered to the base with a hook.

When the model is propelled into a wall, video footage shows that the momentum of the denser CSF carries it forward, forcing the brain backwards (see graphic). Only after the contrecoup impact caused by this backward motion does the brain rebound and hit the impact point.

The model explains why the contrecoup injuries are usually more severe. It also explains what happens when someone is hit on the head by, say, a baseball bat. "If the head is stationary, because there isn't a significant change in momentum, the contrecoup won't be noticeably worse than the coup," says Drew senior. They are presenting the results this week at the American Academy of Neurology meeting in Honolulu.

"Kind of reverses some of the theories, doesn't it?" says Steve Gilbert, a forensic scientist specialising in brain trauma at the State University of New York in Canton. The work will help investigators distinguish accidental head injuries from intentional ones, he says.

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Weblinks

Traumatic Brain Injury, NIH

Forensic science, Steve Gilbert

American Academy of Neurology meeting

« Last Edit: Apr 2^nd, 2003, 3:02pm by Addams »

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