Sleep Deprevation of College Students

Sleep Deprevation of College Students

Sleep Deprivation on College Students
The Exxon Valdez, a major oil tanker, hit ground on March 24, 1984. The tanker spilled millions of gallons of oil into the ocean. This oil wasn’t just normal oil, it was crude oil. The (NTSB) National Transportation Safety Board found that the direct cause of the accident was sleep debt and sleep deprivation. The NTSB determined that the captain handed over command to the third mate and left the bridge. The third mate that was put in charge had 6 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours. The third mate didn’t steer the tanker away quick enough and wrecked. Another tragedy was the explosion of the space shuttle “Challenger” that killed all the astronauts on board one of whom was a teacher. The cause of the Challenger tragedy was a faulty O-ring. The Rogers Commission who was in charge of investigating the cause of the explosion found an absence of data on the o-ring’s ability to function properly at low temperatures. There were reports the O-ring leaked at low temperatures but was brushed off by NASA management as a insignificant problem because they were tired and over worked. The decision to launch the rocket was an error on the NASA manager’s part. The Human Factors Subcommittee decided that the sleep deprivation from the managers was a great deal of the error (Dement 537). Both of these tragedies were caused by sleep deprivation or sleep debt. There are many incidents that include sleep debt and its negative consequences many of these incidents happen while operating machinery. Sleep deprivation increases your sleepiness during the day and also negatively affects your performance on exams.
The human brain records how many hours of sleep a person looses or does not get when they simply do not sleep or do not get a “quality nights” sleep. Dement and Vaughn took ten volunteers and gave them exactly five hours of sleep each night for seven days. Each day, the tendency to fall asleep increased. This provided...

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