Physics Of Concussions Essay

Concussions, Football, and Physics The NFL Playoffs, Steelers, Bengals. The running back Giovani Bernard receives the ball and looks up field, and finds himself staring at a linebacker Ryan Shazier. Shazier explodes onto him and knocks Bernard out cold. These jarring hits are common in the NFL, but most people don’t understand the consequences of them. Later on in life, football players that received head trauma experienced side effects later on, like CTE. CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a neurodegenerative disease that can cause aggression, depression, disorientation, and lead to suicide. But it can only be diagnosed after death. We need to learn more about concussions in football, and how they relate to CTE, to help save people’s
This can be explained by Newton’s 3rd law of motion. His law states that there is an equal reaction to an action. This can be demonstrated in football when a player has his head hit. When a hand or someone else's head accelerates towards and hits your head, you head reacts with the same force. But since your head has less force and mass, it falls back, causing your brain to hit up against your skull. This is the same thing that happens when a player hits the ground. Even though it isn’t necessarily the head hitting the ground, the ground has more mass than the player, causing the player to bounce up slightly, causing motion in his brain.

Overall, football related concussions can be illustrated through an understanding of Newton’s 1st law of motion, the Law of Conservation of Energy, and Newton’s 3rd law of motion. If we look at football through the eyes of science, we see how dangerous it really is. Scientists are still figuring out ways to help stop concussions and understand them better. But by using basic laws of physics, we can see why they happen so often, and why they are harmful. So think next time you are playing a game of tackle football to protect your head, because you only have one