The University of Delaware hosted high school students from New Castle County for a biomechanics day Wednesday.
Padua Academy, Conrad Schools of Science, and William Penn High School students explored biomechanics lab tools like an automated treadmill used to measure balance in stroke patients and seek ways to reduce sports-related injuries.
National Biomechanics Day is an international event. Jocelyn Hafer, Assistant Professor in UD’s Department of Kinesiology and Applied Physiology, says biomechanics worldwide bring in middle school, high school and undergraduate students to learn about the field.
“It’s not one of the fields that you would think about, one of the big ones you would hear about in the media," Hafer says. "But again, it really cuts across a lot of disciplines and it combines a lot of different areas of science.”
That’s why Margo Donlin, a third-year Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering, says she loves the field.
“I think biomechanics is just so broadly applicable to anything," Donlin says. "It can be rehab which is a lot of what we do, but it can also be sports or it can be ergonomics like sitting in your desk chair, it’s applicable to anything, everyday life, anything that you do, is related to biomechanics and I think that’s really cool.”
UD doesn’t have a biomechanics major, but offers a Biomechanics and Movement Science graduate program.
Junior Kyais Ondari is in William Penn’s Allied Health program -learning about patient care and how to perform medical diagnostic tests. He wants to major in chemistry but says he may consider biomechanics after seeing UD’s biomechanics labs.
“The adapted treadmill, like all the technology, that really interests me seeing how it's made and programmed and how they can use that information, that data they gained from those technologies to use and help the population,” Ondari says.
Ondari tried out that adapted treadmill, which senses how far, how fast, and how hard someone pushes off the ground while walking, and adjusts its speed automatically.
