Page 77 - How It Works - Book Of Amazing Answers To Curious Questions, Volume 05-15

Science
Mobile service
WhatsApp claims to
handle 30 billion
messages each day
Could you have ‘text

neck’ syndrome?

How staring at a smartphone can affect your spine
How does
hether you’re trying to get to the next downwards, the effective weight applied to your
level of Angry Birds, or having an spine increases. This can put an enormous sticky tape
Wemoji-filled text conversation with amount of stress on your neck, shortening and

your friends, looking at your smartphone for long tightening the muscles and work?
periods of time could be doing serious damage to compressing the nerves to
your neck. As we tend to hold our phones at chest cause intense pain and Discover the hidden forces
or waist height, we tilt our heads forward to be spasms. Doctors Looking that make gift-wrapping
down to text
able to see the screen. This isn’t so bad if you’re recommend taking puts a lot of a possibility
just checking the occasional message or weather regular texting stress on
your neck he adhesive on sticky tape is a
update, but with smartphone users spending an breaks and
viscoelastic material, meaning
estimated two to four hours a day looking down doing neck
Tthat it behaves both like a solid
at their phones – equivalent to one or two months stretches, or
and a liquid. When you apply pressure
a year – the problem gets much worse. The even switching to it, it flows like a liquid, fi nding its

average human head weighs around 5.4 to making phone way into any tiny gaps in the surface it
kilograms (12 pounds), but when it is angled calls instead. is being stuck to. Then, when you
leave it alone, it turns back into a
solid, allowing it to lock into those
gaps like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle to
hold itself in place. However, before
you even apply any pressure, another
force has already got to work. The
Pain in molecules of the adhesive are dipoles,
meaning they have one positively
the neck charged side and one negatively
charged side. This makes the
How the weight molecules act like tiny magnets,
on your spine creating an electrostatic attraction
changes as you when they come into contact with
tilt your head another surface. These weak sticking
bonds are known as van der Waals
forces, which are also used by geckos
to stick to walls. When you peel off the
tape, this bond is broken, but will
continue to work again and again
until the adhesive surface gets too
clogged up with dust and dirt.

Doctors
recommend

taking regular

texting breaks

and doing neck
r
e
stretches
st
t
e
s
c
h
Tilt angle 0 degrees 15 degrees 30 degrees 45 degrees 60 degrees © Science Photo Library
A scanning electron micrograph
Weight applied of the adhesive side of sticky tape
to spine 5.4kg (12lb) 12.2kg (27lb) 18.1kg (40lb) 22.2kg (49lb) 27.2kg (60lb)
How It Works 77