April is one of our favorite times of the year. The weather starts warming up, flowers start blooming, birds start chirping, and it’s the NC Science Festival! As part of the NC Science Festival, our lab participates in SciMatch which connects scientists with middle school science teachers. The scientists then visit (or, in this case, virtually visit) the school and teach classes for a day. This is TORL’s 6th year participating and 2nd time doing it virtually. We introduce the kids to our research with a hypothetical scenario where a basketball player tears her meniscus. First, we have to learn more about the injury which we do via MRI. Then, once we have a 3D image of the meniscus we can print one on the 3D printer (Activity: kids use Wikistix to try to “3D print” a meniscus). We can also use the scan to make a mold. Then we introduce them to the idea of hydrogels using Instasnow. Much goopier and much messier than actual hydrogels, but also a lot faster and more fun! Finally, we tell them about mechanical testing and then break some stuff on the Instron. It seemed to go over really well, so we may need to adapt it to an in-person format for future years.
