Ideas in Motion: The 2009 Engineering Event

Can You Lend Me a Hand?

Bionics and Prostheses, from Disability to Gold

What do athlete Oscar Pistorius, scientist Robert Full, and artist Chico Bicallo have in common? Each in his own way is concerned with motion. The threads of their stories were woven together by 4-5 and 7-8 science teachers Meredith Olson (Doc “O”) and James Spies in creating the theme for this year’s Engineering Event.

Oscar Pistorius is a double-amputee who runs on blade legs, and fast. So fast, that his times are Olympic-caliber. Robert Full is a professor of integrative biology, who, simply put, studies creatures like bugs and geckos to reveal long-mysterious principles of motion. Designer Chico Bicallo creates intricate moving critters out of found objects.

Can You Lend Me a Hand?  presents avenues of exploration involving motion. It brings together current events, such as the Olympics and Para-Olympics, as well as biology, anatomy, mechanics, physics and art. Students learn how bionics and protheses have advanced from the hook-hand and the peg-leg to artificial arms and blade legs. They design, build, and operate moving bugs, blade legs, and arm models.

The Engineering Event encompasses many ways to learn. Says Doc “O”, “Humans are tool-users and hands-on learning furthers understanding. But students are also learning creatively, employing the novel use of ‘found’ materials, as well as learning co-operatively as they act as local experts and witnesses for others in the class.”  Doc “O” references researcher and professor Marian Diamond, Ph.D, who says, “ ‘Watching' brains don’t grow. No matter what form enrichment takes, it is the challenge to the nerve cells that is important. Data indicate that passive observation is not enough; one must interact with the environment.”

The capstone of the Engineering Event has students gathering in the gym with the devices they have researched, designed, and built: the visible culmination of what they’ve learned. Rather than a performance for an audience, it’s a fun—and a little chaotic—group celebration of an amazing process!