I don’t understand how this happened. A badminton racket shattered moving through the air? And exploded with such force that a shard flew across the court and hit the girl on the sidelines with enough force to impale her skull?
Based on the article, I gather that the racket shattered during play and the aluminum shaft was launched with enough force to impale her through her skull. The momentum behind tools like that is pretty significant and the cross-sectional area of a badminton racket shaft is very small. An adult skull is only around 6-7mm thick. Given she was a young child with a relatively thin, soft juvenile skull, I can see how it could impart enough force to shatter through thin bone if everything lined up perfectly.
Given it was a group of children playing, I wouldn't be surprised if the kids were also trying to smash the shuttlecock as hard as possible.
That was a lot of fucked up analysis. I'm going to go hug my cat and wife now.
I mean, sure, the human skull is only so thick and a child’s skull is soft- er, but…we’re still talking about a shitty little badminton racket. I’ve hit my head pretty fucking hard, on relatively sharp stuff. Breaking skin on your head is relatively rare. To be impaled by a randomly shattering racket, with that thin aluminum? After the thing flies at least a few feet through the breeze off the water…with enough force to then impale bone?? It just sounds really…implausible. With enough force to kill her! It almost seems more than implausible, honestly. Unless there is a factor they just aren’t sharing. Did the kid intentionally hit his sister is the question. It sounds that way, honestly.