Baby TestBed: Abusing Chuckette: The Knee Bounce

I may not have made this explicit yet, but I’ll do it now. I don’t have any intention to tell anyone whether or not a given activity is “safe” for his baby. I’m not qualified to make that call, and I don’t have the data to make it. In particular, I don’t know what kind of G-forces are harmful to anyone, adult or baby (or baby doll filled with gravel). There doesn’t seem to be a lot of Internet-available literature that makes this clear. (Or, I need to try harder to find it.)

I may not have those answers, but I know enough to know what I don’t know. And I know enough to know that the issue is complex. For instance, short falls can generate as much as 50 Gs, but these are routinely harmless. A quick smack on a fat ass cheek could generate a 3-digit G force locally, and leave you with nothing but a handprint and a perverted smile. On the other hand, if someone were exposed to a 16 G force for a minute or so, it would probably kill him. (So sez Teh Wikipedias, anyway.)

But I’ve never been one to let my ignorance hold me back. I aim to draw a few conclusions anyway. These will be based on comparing the so-called “dangerous” baby activities (infant car seat in a jogging stroller or bike trailer) versus everyday activities that people consider completely safe. Today, we get the first baseline of what one such activity generates in RMS and 3-axis G-forces. That’s right, we’re bouncing Chuckette on the knee.

First things first, I made Chuckette a stylish face holster for her accelerometer. It not only holds the accelerometer on Chuckette’s face while transferring a minimum of cheap, ducktape goo to my new blue toy, it looks great too. Watch the runway in Milan next Spring: These are going to be everywhere.

Next, we engaged in some horrible Chuckette abuse. You can see it in the video below. See the way we violently shake the baby? Are you horrified by our blatant disregard for Chuckette’s tender brain!? You should be, after all, the activity you’re witnessing in the video generated the highest G-forces yet for our poor fake infant.