Question: how many blood vessels are in the brain and will you die instantly if one pops or gets damaged. also could you come to our school and blow something up if we all vote for you?

James Stovold answered on 10 Mar 2013:

Hi, it’s difficult to say how many blood vessels there are in the brain, as it is likely to be different for each of us, however — at a guess — I would say there are around 400 miles of blood vessels in total in the average adult human brain. If one of the vessels were to `pop’ or get damaged in some way, you wouldn’t necessarily die instantly, but it is a very serious problem — it’s called having a stroke. Once the vessel pops or gets damaged, the blood can’t get to the right part of the brain, so those brain cells don’t have enough oxygen, and so they start to die. This means that the person having a stroke is unable to use that part of their brain any more, so they may have poor balance or slurred speech. Obviously, if the stroke is not attended to, then the blood will start to build up in the brain (which is called a `haematoma’),
and the pool of blood can start putting pressure on other parts of the brain. This will (generally) lead to death.

In terms of your second point, I would actually really enjoy going round the country to different schools just blowing stuff up!! However, my aim with the prize money — should I win — is to go to schools and show how cool robots can be, and how they can work together to solve problems. Hopefully this will be more constructive for the students, and might encourage more students to get involved in robotics!

Hope that helps

James