Curing Cancer
A fifth-grade student tests his cancer-removal tool.
Students learn about biomedical engineering while designing, building and testing prototype surgical tools to treat cancer. Students also learn that if cancer cells are not removed quickly enough during testing, a cancerous tumor may grow exponentially and become more challenging to eliminate. Students practice iterative design as they improve their surgical tools during the activity.
Biomedical engineers design tools, devices and medicines to help prevent people from getting—or help them heal from—certain illnesses and injuries. In this activity, students practice engineering design to create tools to surgically remove cancer cells. Engineers also apply their math skills to create innovative design solutions to everyday challenges. Through learning about exponential growth in this activity, students also gain biomedical engineering experience in using math to help understand and solve human health problems.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Describe at least one method that doctors use to treat cancer.
- Explain at least one major limitation of current cancer treatments (for example, damage to healthy cells).
- Explain what exponential growth means in the context of tumor growth.
- Apply the engineering design process to design, build and test a device to remove cancer cells.