The University of Rhode Island hosted 400 high school students for a Biomechanics Day event at Mackal Field House on April 3.
The event, a graduate project by kinesiology master’s student Nadia Rajan, boasted 16 stations with various biomechanical innovations for the high schoolers to try. Stations were manned by kinesiology students, both undergraduate and master’s, as well as athletic weight room interns and physical therapy students.
This year’s event was an expansion from last year, introducing new stations and the inclusion of athletic weight room interns.
The available technology included virtual reality headsets, a photoelectric gate that measured running speed, an upper limb prosthetic, an inertial sensor and vertical jump assessments. Students were able to test out equipment as well as assess their own physical abilities.
“The goal of the event is to bring in high school students and let them interact with biotechnology equipment,” Rajan said. “Let them in and find the joy in it.”
One high school in attendance was Bishop Hendricken High School, an all-boys Catholic school in Warwick, Rhode Island. A group of sophomore and junior boys swarmed the equipment, repeatedly testing their skills. The activities kept the boys engaged while learning, Hendricken anatomy teacher and URI alumna Megan Longo said.
“I have a lot of kids who are interested in biomedical engineering or physical therapy,” Longo said. “We’re just exposing them to what that really looks like when it’s in the field.”
Providing high schoolers with real life biomechanic experiences is vital, Longo said.
“That information and skill set is going to be coming up for them,” Longo said.
This year’s biomechanics event was the fifth annual that URI has hosted. National Biomechanics Day is a world-wide celebration of biomechanics in its many forms for high school students and teachers, according to the Biomechanics Initiative website. Over 40,000 high school students participate nationwide.
The Biomechanics Initiative also provides schools with scholarships and grants, specifically to disabled, Latinx, Black and female students. At URI, providing students from marginalized communities with the chance to participate in the event was a key element.
“We’re giving the opportunity to people, such as women and people of color, who don’t always have the opportunity to go to these events and see campuses and do all these things,” Rajan said. “Giving them the chance to get experience and knowledge and hopefully it might give them a passion.”
Collaboration between high schools and URI is another main goal of the event, Rajan said.
“I spoke to a lot of the teachers today, and a lot of them are now saying they’d love to have me come talk,” Rajan said.
The Hendricken boys brought a competitive element to the event, going through stations trying to beat one another, especially the jump height measure and photoelectric gate.
The photoelectric gate measures the speed of the person running through it, which the boys repeated to get the highest speed.
“You see them talking smack the whole time,” Rajan said. “It’s hilarious.”
The photoelectric gate was run by athletic weight room interns, who kept the energy up for the adolescent boys, according to Rajan.
“They kept them entertained, and they obviously had experience because they worked with football,” Rajan said.
For more information on National Biomechanics Day, visit their website at www.the biomechanicsinitiative.org.