As Baseball Season Begins, Which Catcher's Mask Works Better? Kettering University Students Test Traditional and Hockey Style Masks During Research Project.FLINT, Mich. -- Inspired by professional baseball catcher Mike Matheny's forced early retirement from major league play, four Kettering University The university boasts that the majority of its' seniors are employed or accepted to graduate schools before graduation and that one out of 15 alumni either own their own business or are high-level managers in leading companies (see Notable Alumni). seniors tested the protective properties of catcher's masks. Their findings support one for foul tips and the other for batter backswings. Using high speed video, a crash test dummy
Crash test dummies are full-scale replicas of human beings, weighted and articulated to simulate the behavior of a human body, and instrumented to and a skeet skeet: see shooting. throwing machine, they propelled a baseball at about 100 mph at the dummy wearing both styles of catcher's mask. Both masks that the group tested were manufactured for professional use by All-Star, a division of Ampac Enterprises. Crash dummies are instrumented with accelerometers that indicate possible brain or closed-head injuries in humans. The group measured the G-forces exerted on the head in two different types of tests; frontal impact test, simulating a foul-tip, and side impact test, simulating a batter's backswing back·swing n. The initial part of a stroke, in which one moves a racket or club, for instance, to the position from which forward motion begins. striking the side of a catcher's head. The traditional style mask performed better on frontal impact. Peak G-force of the traditional mask at this location was 3.763, while peak G-force for the hockey-style mask was 9.814. The hockey style mask performed better on side impact with a G-force of 13.57 in comparison to the traditional mask recording a value of 32.02. Their conclusion, the traditional style catcher's mask is better against a foul-tip, and a hockey-style catcher's mask is better against a hitter's backswing. The front impact location was where the foul-tip that ended Mike Matheny's career struck on the hockey-style catcher's mask. The old style is a two-piece design with a metal cage with padding across the forehead and over the cheekbones and chin areas, with no padding on the sides of the head and a helmet with no padding. The hockey-style looks like a goalie mask A goalie mask is a mask worn by an ice hockey goaltender to protect the head from injury. History The first mask was a crude leather model (Actually a football "noseguard") worn by Clint Benedict in the 1920s to protect his broken nose. , a plastic outer shell over a metal frame and padding underneath with protective coverage back to the ear area and over the top of the head in front. The research team was Morris "Mo" Roth of Commack, N.Y.; Scott Barel of Sterling Heights Sterling Heights, city (1990 pop. 117,810), Macomb co., SE Mich., on the Clinton River; platted 1835 as Jefferson Township, renamed 1838, inc. 1968. Largely rural until the mid-20th cent., the city grew as a suburb of Detroit, 19 mi (31 km) to the northeast. , Mich.; Jeff Schulze of Bay Port, Mich.; and Josh Maag of Leipsic, Ohio Leipsic is a village in Putnam County, Ohio, United States. The population was 2,236 at the 2000 census. Geography Leipsic is located at (41.101532, -83.984298)GR1. . To see photos from the student project, visit www.kettering.edu and click on: "Foul tip trauma." |
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