National Biomechanics Day Event Report #3 - Avery Kratzer
10/24/2024 1:46 pm
This blog is the third entry into a series about award winners from the International Women in Biomechanics Outreach Grant for National Biomechanics Day events. Each awardee submitted a summary of their event, which has been condensed for brevity and clarity. You can find the other entries to the series here and here.
Avery Kratzer from the BU Sargent College of Health and Rehab Sciences hosted an event for NBD that strove to open up the world of biomechanics to 8th grade students. The attendees had been named the winners of a STEM competition hosted by the One8 Applied Learning Hub for their design of a therapeutic toy for a child with Cerebral Palsy. During their time at BU, they tested their balance on force plates (in the Human Adaptation Lab), speed on the gait carpet (in the Infant Communication Lab), and, most excitingly, tried out TikTok dances using the markerless motion capture system in the Movement and Applied Imaging Lab! Avery attached some awesome videos of this activity, see below!
A goal of their event was to make the ideas and methodology of biomechanics accessible and interesting to the students – as Avery said, “Even if students don't end up being biomechanics researchers, they can draw connections from the technology we use and basic principles of movement to things in their everyday lives. The hope is that it'll spark some curiosity in how they look at the world, regardless of the career path they choose to pursue.” The students also got the opportunity to ask questions to biomechanists, engineers, and clinicians over lunch and connect their classroom experiences to STEM careers. They rounded out the day by having each student filled out an “exit ticket” with one thing they learned and a question they had, which “made for lots of smiles and some chuckles.”
Avery’s advice for hosting your own NBD event was: “Make it fun! My goal with events like these is to show students that math, science, and engineering are for everyone.”
Here are some more photos of their day:
