BioMech - human energy

[icequeen-aran.livejournal.com]

[[Samus has been teaching this class in spirit all these months, seriously. ;_; Also; backdated to Thursday lololol orz]]

*writes most this down on the chalk board as she says it out loud, erasing and rewriting as necessary*

Okay... BioMechanical Engineering is using technology to solve problems which address challenges in the fields biology, medicine and warfare. This branches off into many different subjects which I'll go into more detail in later classes...

• Biomaterials (artificial hips, pace makers)
  
• Biomechanics (mechanical principals on living organisms)
  
• Bionics (turning nature into mechanical design)
  
• Biosensors (canary in a cage)
  
• Biotechnology (genetics, cell biology, food engineering, super viruses!)
  
• Cryobiology (freezing your living body for the future)
  
• Drug delivery (No, not what you're probably thinking.)
  
• Metabolic engineering (fermenting beer!)
  
• Bioweaponry (...)
  
• Stem cell research and Tissue Engineering (building you better organs and body parts)
  
• Biorobotics (prosthetic limbs, androids)
  

There's a lot more than I just listed but I won't go into detail this particular class...

But it's really important to understand how energy works before we can start studying any of that, building death rays robots or any of that fun stuff. Today we're going to do a simple project to help demonstrate how you can use your own bodies to produce renewable energy.
Your body is constantly producing energy, so long as your heart is beating well... even then there's weird exceptions. If you've ever shuffled your feet on a carpet, touched a person and then shocked them, you've seen a little bit of that energy in action; That's static electricity. Not quite the same that your body produces internally though...

If you wanted to move your arm, electrical impulses would travel from your brain, through your nerves and command the cells in your muscles to contract or relax. That moves your arm. This is an electrochemical process, which means that it uses electricity made with chemical molecules. In other words, the electricity in the brain is not produced by electrons flowing the way they do through a household electrical wire. Instead, the brain's electricity is caused by the movements of electrically charged molecules through the neurons' membranes.

But! We can trick the body's muscles into contracting or relaxing by simulating that with an electrode. Reviving heart-attack victims by electric shock is a good example of this.

We can also reverse engineer this process, and generate electricity from our muscle movements. So that brings me to today's project...



A simple electrode no, not the Pokemon Which you'll put on your arm or leg...


And connect to one of these... And I've ripped out all the AC adapter wires in the back, so don't even think of cheating and plugging it into the wall.


To charge these...


To put in this.

I want you to partner up with at least one other person and get those RC cars moving. They move; you get an A. If they don't, you get an F for today.

*leans against her desk with arms crossed* If you get stuck, try thinking creatively.

Feel free to race them in the back of the class or take them home to take apart or whatever. I'm expecting explosions not expecting them back.

Any questions?