Cool or useless?

[OreoGaborio]

The sum of the force transmitted past the cheekpads/head and onto the spinal column is only equal to the force it takes to accelerate the helmet to the speed at which it's moving off of the head...

So if the helmet maintains a steady speed, the forces are equal and opposite and no force is transmitted onto the spinal column.



If you wanted to simulate this, you could take three blocks or something... one representing the helmet, another representing the head and a third representing the body, put them all down on a surface like a sheet of ice & pretend it's zero friction.

Then, put something between the head & body that measured the force between them (which would tell you how much force is being put on the spinal column), and an expanding bladder between the helmet & head and slowly inflated it. That force measuring device would hardly register a thing.

Now put something on the helmet and head that creates drag between the two (like the cheekpads) and all of the force from the bladder would be spent on separating the two.

The only thing that would move in those two instances would be the helmet. The body would hardly move at all because virtually zero force is transfering past the head.



Anyway, I could be totally wrong, but that's just how I see it.... I used to be a total physics geek way back in highschool when we did this kinda stuff