Springs or air cushions, to prevent injury?

[ScienceNostalgia101]

So I was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping today and I noticed the fragile item they sold me was handed to me in bubble wrap. I presume that's at least partly because it's quicker, easier, and possibly cheaper than paying someone to attach a bunch of springs in all directions, but I also wonder if that's partly because the pressure would still be high enough at the exact points of contact with the spring as to still risk breaking the item.

 

This got me thinking; it's one thing to protect property, but what about protecting people? Old-fashioned armor; be it scale, splint, plate, or chain mail; has metal in direct or semi-direct contact with the body it's protecting, so falls from a great height would still transfer most of the momentum through the armor to the body. Modern military armor, I would presume, is more sophisticated, but I would also presume it is more focused on slowing knives and bullets on impact than on cushioning falls.

 

What about a suit of armor for playing, though? These days people fight the uphill battle against childhood hyperactivity; the kind of hyperactivity that people find cute enough to pay to see it in fiction, and that if embraced could help encourage exercise in real life; because a hyperactive child could so lose themselves in their own hyperactivity as to get themselves injured. If one designed a suit of armor that had air cushions; and/or a lot of small springs; between the outer plates and the inner plates; how well would this protect a hyperactive child; and/or fully-grown stunt performers, for that matter; from injuring themselves from falls? For that matter, would an adequate number of springs be safer than air cushions? Why or why not?

Edited December 24, 2020 by ScienceNostalgia101

[Halc]

Bubble wrap protects the thing from brittle impact, and also scratching.  Spring are no better at the former and far worse at the latter.

People don't need it since they're already covered effectively with bubble wrap and thus can connect with a hard object (concrete) at slow speeds without damage.  Sure, I can break bones with a significant impact, but I would need significant deceleration space/area to prevent that.  Car air bags add over 10 cm to my deceleration space and perhaps a quarter square meter to the area. Stunt people put that padding on the thing they hit rather than themselves, else they'd look like Violet in the Wonka factory.

If you want to protect against crushing, you need to put a strong cage/box around it.  Springs/bubbles are not help.

Edited December 24, 2020 by Halc

[ScienceNostalgia101]

The question remains, though, what will protect the individuals within that cage or box from the momentum transferred, through the inner boundary of said cage or box, to the individual within it? I presume air cushions, from your reasoning, would be relatively better than springs connecting separate layers of armor. Would plain air be the best option for this, or would cushions filled with some other (ideally non-toxic) gases that respond more "gradually" to transfers of momentum be superior? Or would the difference be negligible?

[iNow]

The container, malleability, and fill percentage of the bag in which the air is placed matters far more than composition of the air itself. 

[ScienceNostalgia101]

I presume container would mean the bag is made of something soft and airtight, and malleability means it's something like plastic or fabric? But I'm still wondering about fill percentage. Would being only partly full so the bag has more "give" be better, or being completely full because air is compressible anyway be better?