A little story about a cyclist ..

……..and a bit of physics.

Would you drive a car like this?

Maybe?

Then there is a good chance you would end up like this

Have they not heard of my Laws of

motion?

If you travel too close to the person in front then you will not be able to stop in time

If you fall off then gravity pulls you to downwards

When skin and road surface meet – skin wears off before the road surface

These guys ignored Newton at their peril……

Would this guy ignore Newton?

You would think he would know

better

Yes he did…

One artist

impression

And

another

But it was very close to this…

Broken Leg at the hip

Damaged shoulder

joint

Smashed helmet and concussed

Lost skin from shoulder thigh

and legs

The outcome….

But wait.. Physics comes to the rescue!

Physics discoveries helped design many of the features of this handy machine

The discovery of xrays enabled us to see the bones through the flesh to check for breaks..

And this is my hip – can you see the break?

And here is how it was fixed – bolted together with 3 bolts

All it required now is 3 or 4 months to heal.

And the shoulder… No break – just a damaged joint

A knowledge of Physics designed this helmet that saved my head

Surface scraped of on

the road

Foam lining broke to

reduce the impact

To check that there was no bleeding around the brain a special x-ray device all CT was used

This shows the slices of the brain that were imaged

And this this is one of the x-ray images

An another imaging process called MRI was used for even better images….

And apparently, “nothing significant” was found!!!!

The moral of the story is…

Even if you (stupidly) ignore Physics…..

It may save you to ride another day

However if everything else fails then one could try the more traditional Chemical cure….

Graham Batchelor (Batch)Riccarton High School

Video Clips were illegally nicked from various sources •You Tube•A light into darkness – Produced to celebrate 100 years of Xrays