STEM: Robot Hand

My lad and I have been working our way through the Human Body using God's Design Curriculum.  We are currently working through the lesson on Bones.   We've been supplementing as we work our way through as it's good to take rabbit trails as we study things. 

As we were studying the bones and learning how muscles are attached to the bones using tendons, the lad looked at his hands and feet and said "mom, are those my muscles that stick out when I move my fingers and my toes or they tendons?"  I told him the lines you see are your tendons...but they help your muscles to work.  He was FASCINATED.  

To that end we found this video to help us understand how the muscles of the hand work.  It was a bit longer then what we wanted but gave us a ton of information.

 The muscles of the hand are so intricately put together its definitely God's Design.  

To help us further understand how muscles work we thought we'd put together a robotic hand.   We found one on Mystery Science that looked doable.  We liked how it showed the finger curl but disliked how it worked/didn't work as a whole unit.

On a positive note, it has the lad looking for a version that he thinks will work better!  :)  He's been scouring youtube videos for the rest of the afternoon, rejecting various ones.  He did find one using black tubes with wire that he thinks will work pretty good, just need to find the components... but he's continuing to look in case he find something better. 

I am thrilled that my lad's disappointment with this project hasn't stopped his enthusiasm to learn and to find something he really thinks will work well.  I really hope he finds something, but in the meantime, he'll be learning and that is a good thing.