UTC graduate athletic training students Jessica Guadagno, left, and Valerie Snider, right, take a reading from UTC football player Bryant Belew as part of a study to monitor athletes’ core body temperatures during practice.Before Gunner Miller popped the white pill into his mouth and swallowed it – actually, you probably don’t “pop” a $40 core temperature-measuring sensor – the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga linebacker had some questions.
“The first thing I asked them was, can you get electrocuted from this pill?” Miller said.
One of 29 Mocs football players to participate in a recent study by UTC athletic training professor Brendon McDermott, Miller also wanted to know how the sensor would be expelled from his body.
“That seemed like a pretty big deal,” he said.
The answer was the obvious one – the sensor, coated in white silicone and about the size of a few Tic Tacs smushed together, worked its way through the digestive tract.