Volume 5, Issue 36 April 2008
Running, Swimming, and Flying for Science
The CiBER lab includes an impressive array of instruments to analyze animal motion and the properties of materials. Here, students record the movements of a running cockroach in high-speed video. Image courtesy of CiBER
The flight of the hummingbird is a thing of rare beauty. Its blur of wings and helicopter hovering are also marvels of natural engineering. Studying such high-performance acrobatics demands sophisticated instruments and equipment-devices more often found at Boeing than the confines of a university teaching lab.
But Berkeley is different.
Berkeley's Center for Integrative Biomechanics in Research and Education (CiBER) laboratory contains state-of-the-art equipment devoted to helping students, visiting scientists, and others discover the secrets of nature's designs.
Undergraduate and graduate biology and engineering students are already using the laboratory in an Integrative Biology course developed by CiBER director and Berkeley biology professor Robert Full plus fellow biologists and CiBER cofounders Mimi Koehl and Robert Dudley. The uncertain, investigative nature of the curriculum is designed to unleash a storm of collaborative creativity along the way.
CiBER co-director Mimi Koehl helps students use an instrument to test the resiliency of both chicken muscle and squid.Image courtesy of CiBER
"We want to stop treating students as file cabinets that we pour information into to be memorized. Instead, we want to act like research mentors and help them make personal and then universal discoveries," says Full. Full's approach is supported many studies indicating that participation in problem solving not only helps students retain information, but develops critical thinking and innovation.
The lab itself could be the site of an animal Olympiad. The various rooms and stations are fitted with high-speed cameras, bird-scale wind tunnels, a water flume resembling a tabletop endless pool, a miniature treadmill, and more. The assemblage is enough to support just about any current study of animal motion.
Traditionally, lab courses ask students to follow cookbook directions to obtain a predetermined result. Exercises in the CiBER lab are intentionally not so cut and dry.
For example, one lab asks students to run cockroaches over an obstacle course to observe how traveling over rough terrain alters the insects' neuromuscular signals. At first, the students observe none of the expected signal shifts. Most are taken aback by their results.
But by their second crack at the problem in a subsequent lab, many students will have taken matters into their own hands. Some will have researched the literature on cockroach biomechanics or discussed the problem with other students in the course. They learn that others have found results similar to their own and present the insects with higher and more challenging barriers.
"They approach original discovery here. And they've done it so often this semester that it's unprecedented for a teaching lab," Full says.
A CiBER lab student uses an enclosed miniature treadmill to measure the metabolic efficiency of a cockroachImage courtesy of CiBER
The uncertainty and additional research required to progress give students a taste of what working scientists do every day. The labs also foster close working relationships between engineers and biologists. For example, the materials testing station teaches students how to determine the stiffness or resiliency of a material. They start out by measuring the force required to stretch rubber tubing. The real challenge comes next: tugging a piece of chicken muscle. The biologists will dissect out and manipulate the tissue while taking into account the direction of the muscle fibers, and consider whether the muscle needs to be as warm and moist as it is inside the bird. The engineers, on the other hand, tend to take the lead in operating the control software and working out the mathematical calculations.
"Instead of each side being snobs about their expertise, they realize there's a lot to respect in each discipline," says Mimi Koehl. "It's not until they learn to communicate that the complexity of what we're dealing with comes through."
The semester closes with students pursuing independent research projects. "We work with them on what questions are worth asking to make a contribution to science, how to choose the organism that will best help answer your question, and how to propose and test a hypothesis," Koehl says.
The lab is already proving its mettle by eliminating the gap between teaching and research. This semester's students have broken new scientific ground in their lab research--work that Full and his colleagues will help shepherd to publication. In the process, the mysteries behind bird flight, squid propulsion, and insect sprinting will move ever closer to a scientific explanation. These discoveries will provide the biological inspiration to design the next generation of search-and-rescue robots, artificial muscles and new materials.