Sensors for Our Hearts
Human heart modelCopyright 2020 Priddy, Brenda. STEAMsational, Copyright Heirloom Media, www.steamsational.com/diy-heart-model.
How can we design and employ simple sensors to give us accurate information about the human body? In this activity, students make sense of how the human heart works and heart health by using the engineering design process to create a model of a human heart and then use sensors to determine their success. Students will know their heart model is successful if the Arduino Nano Gesture, Proximity, Light & RGB sensor can classify if the student's model has a right atrium (blue) and a left atrium (red).
When students are expected to share their knowledge on healthcare, they typically respond with any background knowledge they bring from their experiences with doctors, nurses, or EMTs. Yet what helps and supports those doctors, nurses, and EMTs to be successful are devices created by biomedical engineers. A physical sensor can measure blood pressure, body temperature, blood flux, blood viscosity, etc. Within this lesson, students will explore how biomedical sensors are used to gain information on the body through biomedical engineering.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Identify parts of the human heart.
- Describe the functions of the heart.
- Identify the parts of an Arduino.
- Explain how a sensor works.
- Compare the function(s) of a sensor to our five senses.