Blog 3: Ankle Support

When I came across the article, Artificial Foot Recycles Energy for Easier Walking, written by the ScienceDaily website, I realized that I had never really known the mechanics behind our natural daily motions. This article wrote about the process of walking with a prosthetic foot and the newly developed artificial foot that is more effective than previous versions. According to Art Kuo, professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan, "for amputees, what they experience when they're trying to walk normally [with a prosthetic foot] is what I would experience if I were carrying an extra 30 pounds." The reason for this, the article explains, is that as we walk, we push down on the floor and produce a collision that naturally loses energy. But as a person walks with an artificial foot, that energy that is lost is never regained by the ankle, so it takes a greater force of push off of the ground.

With the newly designed artificial foot, it captures that energy wasted during each step and a microcontroller causes the boot to return the energy to the system at the most necessary time. It gives a "push-off" from the ground that normal walkers have naturally.

According to the article, test subjects with regular prosthetic feet spent 23% more energy walking than normal walkers, while the new prosthetic foot only spent 14% more energy. The test was conducted with non-amputee test subjects and they used a rigid boot and prosthetic simulators to compare the differences. It proved that the innovative new design, which only uses a small battery, is almost twice as productive.


The most interest part of this article wasn't the new foot that was created; it was more about how cool it is to learn about the science behind some of the most basic functions like walking and also hear of the ways that engineers think. Its like every time you look, there's a new product that is increasing the ease of our daily lives. The world is like one big wiki page and its always being edited by new people and that's what seems so amazing. When it looks like there has been so many advancements just throughout the course of our lives, you would think the progress would slow down over time but there are so many people out there who have a different way of thinking. They don't look at the world and say, "wow, all this progress is awesome." They think of ideas to make things better. Its only a matter of time before it will be easier to walk with fake legs than real legs. I just hope that I can someday learn to create my own ideas even when it seems that the boundaries have already been set.

Plastics Are Bad Mmmkay...

While reading the chapter, Polymers Are Forever, Weisman's studies produced some very interesting findings. Just take a look at the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" and its clear: plastics aren't going anywhere; they are not biodegradable so as we produce more and more plastic, we continuously pile it in to our landfills and in the ocean. Its kind of funny because a study that was discussed by Weisman showed that plastics don't take up but about 20% of our total garbage stored in landfills, but then you understand why, because most of the plastic ends up in our oceans. This, to me, seems scary, because as the plastic breaks down into smaller pieces it is consumed by fish and other marine animals that could either die from it as discussed, when it clogs their bodies up, or end up having a long term effect on them. Why does that matter? It is not certain what the long term effects of plastics in the body could be but let's say the chemicals had a negative impact on even the smallest of animals. Well, then a larger animal feeds on that "infected" animal and may also become sick, and so on. This potentially could screw the food chain that all animals follow. It does seem pretty crazy that it has been proven that plastics consumed by animals could be lethal and still so many of our products containing exfoliates are made with plastic designed to go down our drains and into the ocean.
Just a thought...

Tracking Bugs

While reading an article online from the Popular Mechanics magazine, Unraveling Nature's Social Networks, written by Murray Carpenter, I was amazed at the new technology that is being used in tests being conducted. Director of migration research at the Max Institute for Ornithology, Martin Wikelski, is in charge of observing the migration techniques used by several flying creatures, even the smallest of ones. In one of his tests, he glued .3 gram radio transmitters onto dragonflies’ thoraxes which were used to detect their flying patterns. Also, other scientists at the University of Washington are using tiny microprocessors and transceivers to understand how song sparrows interact with each other. Technology is becoming more advanced and as it progresses the products being made are becoming smaller and smaller. Its ridiculous that we are now able to put radios on insects and small birds, follow them around and learn about them. It reminds me of the movie, Enemy of the State, starring Will Smith where radios were implanted into his clothes and he couldn’t even tell that they were there because they were so small so he was wondering why the people who were chasing him knew exactly where he was at all times. This ability to innovate allows us to understand how animals act and communicate in a way we've never seen before. I wonder if fifty years ago, anyone were able to imagine that technology could allow for such tests to take place. Even now, as I see how fast we are increasing our knowledge and creating new innovations, I can’t even begin to imagine what instruments will be available for us to use for the improvement of our knowledge about the world. Instead of catching and handling dragonflies to put on radios, will we be able to simply look at them and place a tag on them by blinking, allowing us to follow them around and see life through their eyes? The possibilities seem endless and it blows my mind.