Project Description:
GOAL (Get Out and Learn) is an engineering-focus program that aims to inspire young, under-represented, students to pursue a future in engineering through hands-on activities made by current STEM students. In previous semesters, the GOAL kits were primarily focused on mechanical engineering with quantitative data and mechanical systems. There is a lack of bioengineering-inspired projects that promote pursuing bioengineering for future students, so we developed a kit that demonstrates the capabilities of bioengineering by allowing students to create their own valves. Similar to replacement heart valves designed by bioengineers, this kit will allow students to make their own “heart” valve and put it in our system to pump a “heart” and mimic blood flow. Our system contains various water-tight components alongside our custom 3D-printed housing so that students can work on a larger scale compared to real-life heart valves. The valves themselves are acrylic plates that are custom-cut to fit within our system to prevent leakage. With a store-bought water pump, students could pump water and observe the changing water levels on an inlet and outlet tank. Our project focuses on the qualitative nature of the student’s work rather than quantitative like previous GOAL kits in which we focus on observations rather than numerical data. On a corresponding worksheet, we provide brief information about the biological aspects of the human heart that relate to our project as well as an activity that provides a way for students to design a valve on paper and record data from the actual experiment. Overall, our main goal is to introduce an opportunity for future engineering students to explore Bioengineering.
