Now I know how Mary Roach felt when she stared into the sewn shut eyes of a cadaver for the very first time. However, if you can look past their grotesque, pasty exterior, the experience really isn't all that bad...
Let me begin by saying that walking into a lab at MPR is intimidating. If you manage to make it past the high tech security system that guards the lab, you will find a community engineers drilling, hammering, mumbling, disputing mathematical equations, and butting heads...literally. When I first saw the apparatus that drops the cadavers' severed heads, it reminded me a little of the guillotine from Macbeth. In fact, I even felt sorry for the severed heads as they began their descent to the cement, lab floor. The good news is, they were wearing helmets. The bad news is, helmets don't always do the trick when they're falling as high as seven feet off the ground!
The neatly severed human heads are attached and dangled, by magnetic force, off the ground (approx. 7 feet high) by a copper wire with an accelerometer (a device that measures acceleration) drilled into the head. By the flip of a switch, the magnetic force can be turned off, releasing the head from the apparatus just before a heart sinking THUD shakes the cement floor.
While I'll admit the lab does sound like a Rocky Horror Picture Show, the cadavers are fulfilling the important role of preventing concussions from occurring amongst youth football players in the future. You see, once an official model of the helmet is completed, it will be marketed to youth football teams, serving as a reminder of the importance of health and safety in the sports industry.
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