Ouch! He got hit so hard his helmet changed color!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Brain injury monitoring is evolving in football for player safety. But determining the location and force of high-impact collisions is… challenging. A visual aid would help!
Enter Marco Lo Presti and team at Tufts University. They developed a color-changing paint that shows the force of an impact.
When hit, the painted helmets undergo a color change at that spot. It shifts from blue to red, indicating severity. They ran a drop test on the helmets. This showed the initial impact site and forces radiating outward!
Now future football helmets will do more than protect; they’re colorful warning signs!
Reference: Presti, M. L., Guidetti, G., Ruggeri, E., Carrington, T. L., & Omenetto, F. G. (2026). Visualizing and Quantifying Impact with Mechanochromic Sensing Paints Based on Self‐Assembled Polydiacetylene‐Silk Core‐Shell Vesicles. Advanced Science, e18144.