Starring in Super Bowl 46: An LED chin strap

Here at SmartPlanet, we often chronicle the ongoing saga of light emitting diodes, with an eye on their potential to slash the world's energy consumption and to transform architecture, health, construction, fashion, design and electronics.

One thing that constantly grabs our attention is how LEDs are popping up in all sorts of new applications.

Case in point: At this Sunday's Super Bowl, New England running back BenJarvus Green-Ellis will button up his helmet with a chin strap stitched with a green LED that flashes red when the New York Giants hit him hard, according to Comcast SportsNet's PatriotTalk page. This is supposed to alert coaches and medical staff that their players are thumping each other so ferociously that they might get hurt -- maybe even suffer a concussion.

Duh!!!

If it takes a blinking chip to make that call, then maybe coaches and medical staff themselves have suffered enough hits to the head to render their judgments questionable. But there are plenty of smart people on the sidelines across all of the National Football League (the Pittsburgh Steelers' Mike Tomlin for one is a brilliant coach, but I digress, as I will again a few paragraphs down, exposing my sports biases).

Nice public relations for LEDs, but that's about it. Let's not rely on gimmickry to make important decisions about player safety.

Or maybe there's more to the technology than meets the eye. The strap comes from Battle Sports Science, which calls it an "impact indicator."

It could have been disastrous PR if the Patriots had gone ahead with an earlier plan.  Word has it that the team decided not to use the device in the game they lost to the Steelers earlier this year, because a whack from the rough-and-tough linebacker James Harrison might have actually broken the diode, disproving already questionable vendor claims that LEDs last for 25 years.

Wait until next year.

Photo from boston.cbslocal.com

A sampler of SmartPlanet chapters from the LED epic (there are many more, including by this author):

• Philips CEO: We'll cut prices on LED bulbs
• Car's 'glass' roof by day becomes interior light at night. Oh OLEDs!
• Roll up the iPad: Siemens advances the flexible screen
• Lights that heal
• Video: Watch this Samsung flexible tablet PC unfold
• Eye candy: Glow-in-the-dark surfing
• When good lights go bad: LED breakdown
• The hot and cold of LED lighting