During the 2016 semester at the Ann Richards school the 10th grade class is responsible for completing a DAP project that requires us to create a device that will protect a joint on the human body in the game of Roller Derby. My group the Joint Protection Project had a little trouble trying to find the joint that was really for us, starting out we really wanted to do the wrist but, another group in our class wanted that and Emily tried to persuade us to move to the lower back, which none out of the four of us wanted to do. We ended up settling on the fingers, which is kind of a difficult choice but we are really enjoying the challenge and risk that no other team took.
We started our research by dissecting a chicken foot that had its ligaments,tendons,muscles, and skin still attached. We basically did an exploratory surgery on a deceased chicken’s foot. We found that ligaments move with the bones and muscles and that tendons actually move them.
Right now our team is trying to perfect our model that we built to display everything that the hand has in it, even though we are focusing on the fingers, we still need to display everything that they are connected to and that surrounds them. On our first workday in the maker’s studio, we got some type of clay and just basically dove right in there and by the end of class we had a whole skeletal model of the human hand with cartilage. We knew for sure that we knew what we were doing, until the next class and we had to add muscles and there are so many muscles in the hand that I didn’t even know I had! Which I learned about out of one of Ms. Miesner’s books and the internet. Moving on we continued trying to figure out how we were going to make muscles while still trying to keep the fingers from falling apart. We have a drawing that is so detailed that a sixth grade student will be able to name all the bones in the hand.
Currently we are working on our customer needs and using a device that is already made that prevents people from injuring themselves. The Joint Protection Project is dedicated to making sure that each and everyone of our clients are satisfied with our product. We may not have made our product yet, but we are going to split up the days of this week, to take another product that is already created for a test drive to see what the pros and cons of this device are, so that we can take those ideas and put them into the creation of our own device that will definitely be 30 times the device that we ordered
Personally this whole experience is very fun and reviving because, we get to be creative and learn at the same time. My group works oh so very well together and we can have fun but, all work on different things and have them done by the end class while it is very quality work. We work well together and I’m not quite sure if I will be able to get as much work as we have gotten done with any other group.
StarPathDesign 
I really like your model of the hand, trying to add all the muscles makes it look very realistic. I didn’t know there was so much going on our hands. Reading the book also helped my group create the elbow joint with nice details, it was a good resource. I think creating a hand protection device would be very useful. We all need are hands, we are using them right now to type. So having a device that will protect the hand from injuries is a good idea. -Stephanie L.
Your blog is really organized which clearly showed your thinking process. I also like your joint model which is very realistic. There are so many little bones composed the hand but you did a really good job to represent each of them. I assume it must be very time-consuming. I also very admire your team who didn’t intimate by the difficulty of the task, but dedicated yourself to solve the problem.
Shana Fnu Feb.03. 2016