Measuring Our Muscles
Lifting a known weight is one way to determine the strength of our muscles.Copyright Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zulfiya_Chinshanlo_2009.jpg
Student teams build model hand dynamometers used to measure grip strengths of people recovering from sports injuries. They use their models to measure how much force their classmates muscles are capable of producing, and analyze the data to determine factors that influence a person's grip strength. They use this information to produce a recommendation of a hand dynamometer design for a medical office specializing in physical therapy. They also consider the many other ways grip strength data is used by engineers to design everyday products.
Biomechanical engineers must know how much force muscles of the human body are capable of producing so they can guide doctors and ergonomic designers in improving people's overall health. Doctors may use this data to assess an injury and ergonomic engineers might use it to design the operator controls in a car or airplane. To obtain this valuable information, engineers devise tools and practical ways to measure the strength of various muscles in our body.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Construct a model hand dynamometer to quantitatively describe how much force a person's hand muscles are capable of producing.
- Explain the comparative results of the grip strength data and correlating patterns found in the data analysis.
- Develop recommendations for improvements to the model dynamometer.