Shock Absorption
Shock absorption is how soft or flexible materials slow down a hit so it causes less damage.
A sponge sits in the bottom of a sink. You drop a heavy block on it. The sponge squishes down slowly and spreads the force across its soft layers. The block stops gently instead of hitting the hard sink floor.
Explaining shock absorption by grade level
Think about dropping an egg onto a pillow. The pillow is soft, so it slows the egg down gently. That means the egg does not crack. Hard ground stops the egg too fast, and that quick stop is what breaks it.
Projects that explore shock absorption
Air pressure inside football helmet padding changes how much of a blow reaches your head. In this experiment, four plastic helmets sit over a Styrofoam simulated head fitted with an accelerometer probe. A weight drops from a pulley onto each helmet, which has been pumped to a different air pressure — from 10 to 50 mmHg. As pressure rises, the padding slows down more of the impact. At 50 mmHg, the force reaching the simulated head drops to just 10 Newtons.
Thicker foam or a higher price tag might suggest better protection, but the real question is how much force passes through. Here, a 3 kg weight drops from 2 meters onto three bicycle helmet brands at different price points. A basketball sits inside each helmet, pumped to the same pressure, and a pressure gauge on the ball records the peak impact force. After five drops per helmet, all three produce similar pressure readings. That means basic flexible materials can slow down a hit just as effectively regardless of cost.