Hour Exam II

Inclass Group Problem

John Jacob is a 65 year old man who has experienced some bouts of fainting in the last month. Today, John was standing in his kitchen when he blacked out and fell on his hip. He was brought into the small community outpatient clinic describing pain in his hip area. The X-ray machine is being repaired and you would like to determine if the force of the floor on the hip at impact would be large enough to fracture the hip bone. If your calculations suggest that possibility, you could send John to the major area hospital 60 miles away. You take some measurements on the patient and find that he weighs 165 pounds and he is 6 feet 2 inches tall.

What information do you need and what assumptions will you need to make in order to estimate the force on John's hip? What physics principles will you use to solve this problem? Outline a procedure that you can use to find the force.

When you have answered the questions above and outlined a problem-solving procedure, hand this sheet into your instructor and obtain page 2 of this test question.

"http://www.udel.edu/pbl/curric/hip.html"
Last updated Nov. 22, 1996.
Copyright Barbara Duch, Univ. of Delaware, 1996.