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Friday, June 29, 2018

One of our seniors has an experiment on the Space Station!!

Congratulations to senior Sarah Bloom, who now has an experiment she helped design on the International Space Station (ISS)!! As part of a summer program she participated in last summer, an experiment designed to study the behaviors of bees and their vital role in pollination was part of the cargo on a SpaceX supply launch to the ISS this morning.

Sarah is at Cape Canaveral to watch the launch live, and also made and presented a poster prior to the launch! Way to go, Sarah!!

Monday, June 18, 2018

Good motivation for real applications of elastic/spring behaviors: Small organisms

So, it is the right question to ask when we cover something like springs in class: Why should we care? Besides being able to solve some physics problems, what's the point?

A cool application has to do with the size of organisms. Small critters like insects are too small to have muscles the way we do. Instead, they've evolved effectively springs in their legs, which are more linear than muscles, which are multidimensional and, therefore, take up too much space for their body to fit or support. Awesome!

Keep in mind that biomechanical studies are something we can try to do in our research center!