Patient - Nyota Uhura

• 49 year old female
• Has a metal allergy
• Stiffness in the thigh and groin area
• Extreme discomfort when sitting down

Figure 1: A radiograph of our patient’s pelvic region

Coding Sub-Team

• Calculations regarding stress/strain of the implant and bone mechanics
• Subprogram 1: Minimum Allowable Implant Stem Diameter
• Subprogram 2: Fatigue life
• Subprogram 3: Number of Years Before Risk of Fracture
• main() function with all global variables and a loop to test subprograms in quick succession

Figure 2: An early 3D model of our implant

Diagnosis - Rheumatoid Arthritis

• Bilaterally symmetrical damage
• Joint space narrowing
• Bone erosion
• High WBC count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide

Figure 3: The 3D printed implant

Looking Back on Design Project 2

<aside> 🛠 I have past experience with programming in Python, so I did not learn many new things about python while on the coding sub-team. As a result of this experience however, I was able to take charge and help the other sub-team members through the project, and I feel that I improved as a leader and teacher by doing so. I think that the coding was my favorite part of the project, since despite my past experience, it still posed a fun challenge where I also got to demonstrate an understanding of materials engineering concepts like stress and strain.

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<aside> 💡 Throughout the project, I was curious how I could make the code more efficient, and what we could have done with other materials. For example, some of the calculations done by the computer could cancel out, resulting in some redundancy. Whenever I think of using different materials, I am reminded that our patient has a metal allergy. This makes me think, what could we have done differently without this constraint? Would we be able to work around the allergy and use metal anyways?

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<aside> ⛔ I’ve been praising our team for this project so far, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t issues. Scheduling meetings outside of design studio time was a big one, much like design project one*.* Another stumbling block was that a lot of the coding sub-team’s work was not necessary on the poster board, resulting in an imbalance of who was speaking sometimes during the group presentation. This showed me that although individual presentations are okay for me, as I demonstrated in design project one’s 3 Minute Thesis, group presenting is something I should certainly work on.

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<aside> 🚧 I believe that my biggest shortcoming in the project was when I was explaining the code I wrote to others and when suggesting how to write certain code when teammates were unsure. I fell victim to the illusion of the expert, which means that since I am experienced in python, it must be easy to catch on fast, which was not the case. I think this sometimes caused unnecessary frustration within the group, and I started to avoid this, which seemed to help near the end of the project.

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