Amy is dedicated to science. She really supports the scientific method and is always looking for ways to further knowledge, especially when it comes to human evolution. She's particularly interested in how our human ancestors became bipedal.
So, when our friend Adam called and said he was looking for a few good babies to take part in his study, she agreed right away.
She was asked to walk back and forth on this wooden platform with little motion sensors attached to her legs. Adam captured her walking on six motion sensors, a camera, and a pressure plate that measured her little footsteps and how she distributes her weight when she walks.
Walk on this thing? No problem. I got this.
In fact, she did it 63 times in a row. For a sticker.
I hope that it gives Adam a lot of good data. It was pretty fun to watch, and it's an awesome study. He's comparing variation in the ways that babies and kids walk so that he can look for patterns in the way humans learn to walk upright. That way they can compare what we know about modern people's walking habits and modern skeletal information (not Amy's!!-from historic graves) and see what our walk does to our bones. Then, they can look at other hominids' bones (like Australopithicenes and their friends) to see if they were walking in the same ways, dig? It's pretty cool, and a creative way to approach the problem, don't you think?
I would have thought it would take a lot more than a sticker to get her to do that.
ReplyDeleteWell done Amy!
Liz and Rob, you must be so proud of your little scientist.
That's pretty impressive that she would walk the same line 63 times. You'd have to give me more than a sticker to keep my attention.
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