Students continue their exploration of the human senses and their engineering counterparts, focusing on the auditory sense. Working in small groups, students design, create and run programs to control the motion of LEGO® TaskBots. By doing this, they increase their understanding of the use and function of sound sensors, gain experience writing robot programs, and reinforce their understanding of the sensory process.

Students gain a deeper understanding of how sound sensors work through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT taskbots and sound sensors. Student groups each program a robot computer to use to the sound of hand claps to control the robot's movement. They learn programming skills and logic design in parallel. They experience how robots can take sensor input and use it to make decisions to move and turn, similar to the human sense of hearing. A PowerPoint® presentation and pre/post quizzes are provided.

Culture, Embodiment, and the Senses will provide an historical and cross-cultural analysis of the politics of sensory experience. The subject will address western philosophical debates about mind, brain, emotion, and the body and the historical value placed upon sight, reason, and rationality, versus smell, taste, and touch as acceptable modes of knowing and knowledge production. We will assess cultural traditions that challenge scientific interpretations of experience arising from western philosophical and physiological models. The class will examine how sensory experience lies beyond the realm of individual physiological or psychological responses and occurs within a culturally elaborated field of social relations. Finally, we will debate how discourse about the senses is a product of particular modes of knowledge production that are themselves contested fields of power relations.

Students reinforce their knowledge that DNA is the genetic material for all living things by modeling it using toothpicks and gumdrops that represent the four biochemicals (adenine, thiamine, guanine, and cytosine) that pair with each other in a specific pattern, making a double helix. They investigate specific DNA sequences that code for certain physical characteristics such as eye and hair color. Student teams trade DNA "strands" and de-code the genetic sequences to determine the physical characteristics (phenotype) displayed by the strands (genotype) from other groups. Students extend their knowledge to learn about DNA fingerprinting and recognizing DNA alterations that may result in genetic disorders.

As a class, students work through an example showing how DNA provides the "recipe" for making our body proteins. They see how the pattern of nucleotide bases (adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine) forms the double helix ladder shape of DNA, and serves as the code for the steps required to make genes. They also learn some ways that engineers and scientists are applying their understanding of DNA in our world.

This course introduces students to the art and formal ideologies of contemporary dance. We explore the aesthetic and technical underpinnings of contemporary dance composition. Basic compositional techniques are discussed and practiced, with an emphasis on principles such as weight, space, time, effort, and shape. Principles of musicality are considered and developed by each student. Working with each other as the raw material of the dance, students develop short compositions that reveal their understanding of basic techniques. Hopefully, students come to understand a range of compositional possibilities available to artists who work with the medium of the human body.

Student teams create laparoscopic surgical robots designed to reduce the invasiveness of diagnosing endometriosis and investigate how the disease forms and spreads. Using a synthetic abdominal cavity simulator, students test and iterate their remotely controlled, camera-toting prototype devices, which must fit through small incisions, inspect the organs and tissue for disease, obtain biopsies, and monitor via ongoing wireless image-taking. Note: This activity is the core design project for a semester-long, three-credit high school engineering course. Refer to the associated curricular unit for preparatory lessons and activities.

To reinforce students' understanding of the human digestion process, the functions of several stomach and small intestine fluids are analyzed, and the concept of simulation is introduced through a short, introductory demonstration of how these fluids work. Students learn what simulation means and how it relates to the engineering process, particularly in biomedical engineering. The teacher demo requires vinegar, baking soda, water and aspirin.

The digestive system is amazing: it takes the foods we eat and breaks them into smaller components that our body can use for energy, cell repair and growth. This lesson introduces students to the main parts of the digestive system and how they interact. In addition, students learn about some of the challenges astronauts face when trying to eat in outer space.

Following the steps of the iterative engineering design process, student teams use what they learned in the previous lessons and activity in this unit to research and choose materials for their model heart valves and test those materials to compare their properties to known properties of real heart valve tissues. Once testing is complete, they choose final materials and design and construct prototype valve models, then test them and evaluate their data. Based on their evaluations, students consider how they might redesign their models for improvement and then change some aspect of their models and retest aiming to design optimal heart valve models as solutions to the unit's overarching design challenge. They conclude by presenting for client review, in both verbal and written portfolio/report formats, summaries and descriptions of their final products with supporting data.

Students' understanding of how robotic ultrasonic sensors work is reinforced in a design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots and ultrasonic sensors. Student groups program their robots to move freely without bumping into obstacles (toy LEGO people). They practice and learn programming skills and logic design in parallel. They see how robots take input from ultrasonic sensors and use it to make decisions to move, resulting in behavior similar to the human sense of sight but through the use of sound sensors, more like echolocation. Students design-test-redesign-retest to achieve successful programs. A PowerPoint® presentation and pre/post quizzes are provided.

As part of the engineering design process to create testable model heart valves, students learn about the forces at play in the human body to open and close aortic valves. They learn about blood flow forces, elasticity, stress, strain, valve structure and tissue properties, and Young's modulus, including laminar and oscillatory flow, stress vs. strain relationship and how to calculate Young's modulus. They complete some practice problems that use the equations learned in the lesson mathematical functions that relate to the functioning of the human heart. With this understanding, students are ready for the associated activity, during which they research and test materials and incorporate the most suitable to design, build and test their own prototype model heart valves.

Students extend their knowledge of the skeletal system to biomedical engineering design, specifically the concept of artificial limbs. Students relate the skeleton as a structural system, focusing on the leg as structural necessity. They learn about the design considerations involved in the creation of artificial limbs, including materials and sensors.

This unit covers the broad spectrum of topics that make-up our very amazing human body. Students are introduced to the space environment and learn the major differences between the environment on Earth and that of outer space. The engineering challenges that arise because of these discrepancies are also discussed. Then, students dive into the different components that make up the human body: muscles, bones and joints, the digestive and circulatory systems, the nervous and endocrine systems, the urinary system, the respiratory system, and finally the immune system. Students learn about the different types of muscles in the human body and the effects of microgravity on muscles. Also, they learn about the skeleton, the number of and types of bones in the body, and how outer space affects astronauts' bones. In the lessons on the digestive, circulatory, nervous and endocrine systems, students learn how these vital system work and the challenges faced by astronauts whose systems are impacted by spaceflight. And lastly, advances in engineering technology are discussed through the lessons on the urinary, respiratory and immune systems while students learn how these systems work with all the other body components to help keep the human body healthy.

Students learn how healthy human heart valves function and the different diseases that can affect heart valves. They also learn about devices and procedures that biomedical engineers have designed to help people with damaged or diseased heart valves. Students learn about the pros and cons of different materials and how doctors choose which engineered artificial heart valves are appropriate for certain people.

All of us have felt sick at some point in our lives. Many times, we find ourselves asking, "What is the quickest way that I can start to feel better?" During this two-lesson unit, students study that question and determine which form of medicine delivery (pill, liquid, injection/shot) offers the fastest relief. This challenge question serves as a real-world context for learning all about flow rates. Students study how long various prescription methods take to introduce chemicals into our blood streams, as well as use flow rate to determine how increasing a person's heart rate can theoretically make medicines work more quickly. Students are introduced to engineering devices that simulate what occurs during the distribution of antibiotic cells in the body.

Students' understanding of how robotic light sensors work is reinforced in a design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots and light sensors. Working in pairs, students program LEGO robots to follow a flashlight as its light beam moves around. Students practice and learn programming skills and logic design in parallel. They see how robots take input from light sensors and use it to make decisions to move, similar to the human sense of sight. Students also see how they perform the steps of the engineering design process in the course of designing and testing to achieve a successful program. A PowerPoint® presentation and pre/post quizzes are provided.

Students learn how forces affect the human skeletal system through fractures and why certain bones are more likely to break than others depending on their design and use in the body. They learn how engineers and doctors collaborate to design effective treatments with consideration for the location, fracture severity and patient age, as well as the use of biocompatible materials. Learning the lesson content prepares students for the associated activity in which they test small animal bones to failure and then design treatment repair plans.

In this open-ended, hands-on activity that provides practice in engineering data analysis, students are given gait signature metric (GSM) data for known people types (adults and children). Working in teams, they analyze the data and develop models that they believe represent the data. They test their models against similar, but unknown (to the students) data to see how accurate their models are in predicting adult vs. child human subjects given known GSM data. They manipulate and graph data in Excel® to conduct their analyses.

In this activity, students will review vocabulary relating to the body and parts of the body. Additionally, students will practice talking about health and how they stay healthy.