Elementary gifted students who participate in the DEPTH program spent a day measuring electric impulses in their brains, programming skeletons to kick soccer balls, and modeling the movement of cells during a field trip to the University of Virginia’s Biomedical Engineering Research Laboratories and the Kluge Children's Rehab Center in March.
During this highly hands-on field trip, these elementary students learned a great deal about the field of biomedical engineering.
They experienced how infrared cameras monitored sensors and would transfer movement to a skeleton on a computer, similar to how Pixar does for cartoon animals; climbed a wall with force plates that transferred their energy to a computer graphing program; witnessed a brace with newly invented sensors that will record a cerebral palsy client’s movements and send via usb port directly to the doctor /therapist; used glucose solutions to keep cells alive, and did slide mounts of their own cells; used a 3-D printer to form a femur and a heart; and discussed with professors what it took to work on a biomedical team.