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the spongy bone and tough as nails beaks or woodpeckers are inspiring a new generation of shock absorbers potentially shielding airplane back boxes football players and other valuable materials from the forces of
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impact woodpecker hammer the beaks into trees at the astonishing rate of 18 to 22 times per second subjecting their brain to deceleration forces of 1200 g which
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each strike this is more than 10 times the g-force you would experience if you were involved in a high-speed car crash sang hee yoon and sumin park of the university california berkeley set out
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to learn how woodpeckers can survive such powerful deceleration forces they found the bird's anatomy acts to protect their brains in four ways their beaks are hard but elastic their skull
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bones is spongy there's very little room for fluid between the skull and brain cutting down on vibrations and they have a special structure called the hyaloid layer attached to the woodpecker's tongue to
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reduce vibration new scientist reports airplane black boxes can survive about 1000 g the researchers came up with mechanical analogues for these capabilities and built a new type of shock absorbing
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device involving glass beads embedded in a steel inky cylinder to mimic the beak strength and toughness the researchers started with a steel case to evenly distribute the load and cut down vibration like the hyaluide
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they added a rubber layer the thin layer of fluid was represented by a second metal shell this one was made of aluminium and the and inside that they used closely black one millimeter diameter glass beads to simulate the
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skull sponginess the electronic device was embedded in the beats now this new technology for shock absorbers is paving the way for innovation across fields
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