Junior Tyler Johnston is at the front of the classroom holding a foot-long model of an index finger. “To simulate tendons, I sewed ribbons to cords, but I can’t bend the fingertip,” he says, demonstrating the problem. Still wearing blue scrubs from her morning at the Medical Center, professor of orthopedic surgery Amy Ladd points out that the index finger is anatomically correct because it was made from CT scans of real bones. What it doesn’t have are muscles and skin to stabilize it—hence the difficulty inherent in Johnston’s group project: creating an educational model of the hand with accurate finger movement. Ladd praises Johnston for displaying his first, failed attempt: the finger entombed in polyurethane because he forgot to add the chemical that would release it from the mold.
The course Ladd has developed is “awesome,” says Johnston, a human biology major. In Ortho 222: The Anatomy of Movement, 12 students from a variety of disciplines work on four projects that produce original research. Ladd, three additional core faculty members and two dozen speakers take turns giving the thrice-weekly lectures. Among them: filmmakers from Finding Nemo, one of whom demonstrated the robotic gait that results when animators don’t understand that walking is initiated from the hips.
The goal of the course, Ladd says, is “to marry art and science in the study of human movement.” She explains that bioengineers who have an artistic aesthetic, as well as an appreciation for grace, will design more functional prosthetics. Conversely, a solid foundation of biomechanics is invaluable to artists, as it was to Leonardo da Vinci, who relied on dissection and keen observation as a foundation to create his masterpieces. Indeed, the course draws students from the arts, engineering and medicine.
Senior Kelsey Twist says she was “immediately attracted” to the course’s interdisciplinary approach. “Not only has this class helped me understand the way the body functions anatomically, but I believe it has made me a better art historian and a more competitive athlete as well,” says the varsity lacrosse player.
Twist and two classmates are at work on the most glam student project, golf-swing analysis. PGA golfer Notah Begay agreed to be dotted with 53 sensors that relay him onto a computer screen in Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital’s Motion & Gait Analysis Lab as a stick figure swinging away. Afterward, Begay, ’94, and his trainer, Chris Frankel, speak to the class in a Clark Center room permeated by the smell of freshly brewed coffee from the nearby Peet’s. Bouncing a golf ball on a club, Begay discusses the difficult but rewarding process of healing a torn disc in his back through training, not surgery. “I’m a full-blooded Native American,” he says. “I have a lot of faith in the human body.”
The work in the gait lab revealed that Begay’s left gluteus maximus muscle fires at a very low intensity during the arc of his swing, suggesting more muscle activity in thigh and leg than hip during the downswing and impact. It’s a surprising finding. Is this a little-used muscle that can be left to atrophy like a tennis player’s free forearm? Or a muscle that can be trained to give Begay a competitive edge? Continuing this work will fall to future students.
Another project team uses the gait lab to analyze the differences between Merce Cunningham-style dance and traditional ballet. Dance lecturer Diane Frank is converted to a stick figure capering across a computer screen, followed by senior English major Jessica Goldman. Last but not least, the ever-game Ladd appears in toe shoes on a Saturday afternoon to generate data for the project team. She watches Goldman’s sequence and decides to forego the double pirouette.
In the fourth project, senior English and math major Grace Liu and mechanical engineering grad student Tara Watkins are creating a standardized index to evaluate upper-limb function in kids with cerebral palsy. To make devices that test reach and coordination, they learned to use the saw, planer and drill press in the Product Realization Lab. Their camaraderie is evident as they laugh about the guys who fed a piece of wood into a table saw the wrong way and nearly decapitated a bystander. Did they know each other before? “Nah,” Watkins says, “we’re Ortho 222 friends.”
