Another exhibit I enjoyed was the Dymaxion House designed by Buckminster Fuller in the 1920s. Buckminster Fuller was not the man who first synthesized buckminsterfullerene, or C60 (that distinction goes to nobel laureates Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, and Richard Smalley of Rice University), as I originally thought. No, Fuller is most famous for inventing the geodesic dome. He's also well-known for his Dymaxion House, a cheap, sustainable, and virtually indestructible home. The house looks kind of like a big bag of Jiffy-Pop right before you take it off the stove. It's made of cheap and light aluminum, giving it a very shiny futuristic appearance. The house is suspended by one central post, so the whole thing can swing back and forth in an earthquake or storm. The round shape of the Dymaxion House maximizes living space while minimizing building materials. There are also rotating shelves and closets operated electronically to maximize space. Sadly, the Dymaxion House never went into production, even though it seemed pretty livable and cost about as much as a high-end car--I don't think I would mind living in one, if it was a little spruced up.
Today I attended a Winter Wilderness Medicine Workshop at Kensington Metropark about 30 minutes north of Ann Arbor. The workshop was taught by some very knowledgeable instructors--including emergency medicine residents and attending physicians. Most of the docs had been on mountaineering expeditions and had some amazing stories to tell. I learned about the Gamow bag, a simple but ingenious and effective piece of equipment for treating patients with altitude sickness. Patients crawl inside the bag, the medic closes a super strong zipper, and then someone uses a foot pump to pressurize the bag. The pressure in the inflated bag can reach the pressure at an altitude over 5,000 feet lower than the actual altitude. One of the instructors used to work in alpine search and rescue in Utah and had done extensive research on avalanches. He told us about all the factors that affect avalanche risk, such as slope steepness, the direction the slope is facing, the type of snow that has fallen, the temperature, the wind, tree cover, and more. We got to play with avalanche rescue beacons used to find people buried in the snow, and we also practiced a fine probe search, which must be done when the victim is not wearing a rescue beacon. In the probe search, a line of people each carrying a twenty foot probe walk step-by-step over the avalanche field, every step pushing the probe in the snow on their left, center, and right. If someone thinks they hit something under the snow, the probe is left in the snow and another line of rescuers with shovels is responsible for digging to the bottom of the probe. Behind the probe line, specially trained dogs sniff for human scents wafting up through the probe holes. It is a painfully slow process. In fact studies show that if avalanche victims are not rescued within 15 minutes, their chances of survival are very slim. So by the time the search and rescue time arrives, they're usually hunting for the dead body. However, a device called an Avalung can buy the victim time. Although there is usually plenty of air mixed in with the snow that is burying an avalanche victim, the victim typically asphyxiates because the warm air he/she breathes out melts the snow immediately surrounding their face, and then the snow refreezes, sealing their face in a tiny air-tight compartment. The Avalung is just a tube that channels expired air behind the victim's back so that the area around their face is not iced in. When the Avalung is used properly, the limiting factor in survival becomes hypothermia rather than asphyxiation.
Here is a video of an avalanche:
