Our lab and department has won not one but TWO awards for our National Biomechanics Day efforts!

First of all, Stephanie and Maggie won the Biomechanics Art competition. Check out their awesome graphic:

Also, we won one of the 2018 Greatest Impact awards for our event in April. Congratulations to Nicholas, who put the entry together, and everyone who helped us to have a successful event. Check out the Facebook post to see the award announcement.

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Yesterday was our favorite day of the year, once again! No, not Christmas (though we do love presents)… it was National Biomechanics Day! We had nearly 250 students and teachers come visit us at NC State. Due to having so many visitors, we split the event between Engineering Building 3 (our home) and the nearby Hunt Library. The visiting students had a great time, and we like to think they learned something. The scientists also had a great time getting students more excited about biomechanics.

We can’t wait until 2019!  In the meantime, check out some photos of our lab in action.

 

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Maggie and Stephanie won the 2018 National Biomechanics Day Art Competition, with their photo submission. The competition was sponsored by Stanford Sports Science. See the announcement on Twitter:

Here's @JacqueColeLab 's entry into the #NBD2018 art competition! Biomechanics involves so many different areas of science, we wanted to capture that in our graphic. Made by Maggie Tamburro and me. @SanfordSportSci @BiomechanicsDay pic.twitter.com/IamqxFz3FH

— Stephanie Teeter (She/her) (@SeeStephScience) March 29, 2018

And check out their entry (click to enlarge)!

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Our lab again brought the exciting world of bone healing and biomechanics to some local high school students with the Engineering Bits and Bytes. Check us out in action!

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Once again, the OML participated in SciREN, which aims to connect local STEM researchers and educators to foster the dissemination of current research and ultimately enhance the science literacy of today’s youth. Nicholas wrote an amazing lesson plan focusing on the structure and function of bone, including studying material properties, Wolff’s Law, and comparative bone anatomy of various animals. We had a lot of interest from educators of all levels in this great lesson plan

If you’re interested in checking out the lesson, you can find it here: Structure and Function of Bone Activity. Any feedback would be very much appreciated, please email Stephanie or Nicholas.

Here are some photos of us in action!

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1. North Carolina State/University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Stephanie Teeter): This group uploaded their demos to the ASB Teaching Repository, allowing others the opportunity to recreate them. The NC State/UNC team consisted of six independent laboratories who hosted unique demos covering a wide variety of topics in biomechanics and motor control, ranging from applications of material property testing in orthopedic care to the design of exoskeletons used to assist human locomotion. This group also hosted a scavenger hunt based on the demos to further engage the students. Overall, this event was an interactive and exciting showcase of biomechanics which introduced the students to biomechanics research and the impact it can have on the world!

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The second annual National Biomechanics Day took place on April 6, 2017. We taught about 50 local high school students more about this exciting field. Check out some photos below.

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Jacque has recently volunteered to act as a mentor to two local students who are interested in STEM through the Carolina ADMIRES (Assisting in Development and Mentoring an Innovative Research Experience in Science) program. The program is designed for 8th and 9th grade students who are interested in careers in STEM.

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The first annual National Biomechanics Day was held on April 7, 2016. Its goal was to attract high school students to the emerging field of biomechanics. We had students from several local schools come to Centennial Campus and tour some of the labs in our department, including the OML. Our content focused on the importance of bone micro-architecture and cellular activity. Also, Andy used a hand-crank three point bending system to break a chicken bone, which was pretty neat!

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Jacque, Andy, Carolyn, Hui, and Amir once again teamed with the The Engineering Place, this time to teach middle school school students about bone repair at their Bits and Bytes Engineering Day for middle schoolers. We may have had even more fun than the students! 

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