Tag: SciMatch

We once again participated in the NC Science Festival’s SciMatch event to virtually visit two middle school classrooms. We taught them about improving options for treatment following meniscus injury using a hypothetical NC State basketball player as an example. Check out some ‘action shots’ below.

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.

Like most things during the COVID-era, our annual SciMatch  classroom “visit” went virtual. One silver lining was that we were paired with a great middle school group based in Mt. Airy, NC, much further away than our normal classroom visits.

We talked about the soft tissues in the knee, why they’re important, and how our lab is trying to improve treatment when they’re damaged. Then we had them “3D print” a meniscus using WikiStix. The next day we gave them all an actual 3D printed meniscus mold that they filled with polyacrylate powder(InstaSnow) to get an idea for how we can use 3D printing in biomedical engineering to make a custom meniscus designed especially for a patient. 

The WikiStix menisci

The Scenario: (Why do we want to make a customized meniscus?)

Checking out the kids’ InstaSnow menisci

Our lab loves doing SciMatch (formerly Invite a Scientist) as part of the North Carolina Science Festival. We have participated since 2016, and loved all the teachers and students that we’ve met. This year, we headed out to Exploris Middle School in Raleigh on Wednesday to spend time with the 6th graders and show them some our awesome science. A great time was had by all, including us and we can’t wait until next year!  Check out our tweet about it, or see photos below.

Our lab (@mattbfish) did our #SciMatch visit yesterday at one of @ExplorisSchool‘s 6th-grade classrooms as part of the @ncscifest to do some fun activities and tell them about why we love being scientists! #IMPACTS #ScienceIsFun #SciComm pic.twitter.com/iXQ47R9bnO

— Stephanie Teeter (@SeeStephScience) November 21, 2019

We once again visited Ms. Baumgarten’s class at Apex Middle School. Unlike last time, Ms Baumgarten is now teaching 8th grade science, which means they know about cells/tissues, so we decided to make them honorary doctors and brainstorm how to treat some knee injuries. (we think) they had a great time and we know we did!

 

See Steph’s tweet here and below:

 

Our lab group (@mattbfish) had a great time yesterday visiting Sharon Baumgarten’s 8th graders at @apexmscougars to talk to them about why we love science & engineering as part of the @ncscifest Novozymes SciMatch program! #Outreach #SciComm #NextTimeWellTryToRememberToTakePhotos pic.twitter.com/IJqe8Thc1U

— Stephanie Teeter (@SeeStephScience) April 30, 2019

It’s that time of year again! Spring means outreach (we love outreach year round, but opportunities seem to crop up in the spring).

 

• Invite-a-Scientist: The Invite-a-Scientist program is put on by the North Carolina Science Festival. It pairs scientists with local middle schools, where they spend the day teaching students about their research and why they chose to become a scientist. We went out to Apex Middle School to teach the kids a bit about biomedical engineering. Steph T tweeted about it for us. 

 

 

• CVM Open House: The vet school at NC State hosts a yearly outreach event to teach the public about some of the amazing research going on.
  Stephanie G tweeted about this one

 

Back in March we participated in the Invite a Scientist program through the UNC Science Festival. We visited a 6th grade class at Apex Middle School. You can see our post about our visit here.

 

Since then, we put together a lesson plan that can be used by late middle school or high school science teachers to introduce their students to the ideas of material properties, tissue growth and function, and how we hope to use 3D printing in medicine in the future. It ties in to the Next Generation Science Standards in the areas of middle and high school life science (LS) and engineering, technology, and applications (ETS) (more specific connections can be found in the lesson plan).

 

If you’d like to use our lesson plan, you can view and download it here or below. Please send a quick email to Stephanie (sdteeter[at]ncsu.edu) and let us know what you think, whether you opt to use it or not!

 

Lesson Plan_Understanding Mechanical Properties to Improve Current Knee Injury Treatments