Newcastle Science Festival and The School of Psychology and Sport Sciences explore the human body

The sell out evening, dedicated to Designer Bodies, consisted of a variety of stands, shows and performances and showcased a variety of issues linked to the human form.

The School hosted a selection of stands offering visitors a chance to look at their bodies in different ways. Some of these stands included; the ‘Walking Skeleton’ stand which use state-of-the-art motion capture technologies to show three-dimensional footage of people walking; the ‘Food for Thought’
stand, which allowed people to have their blood flow monitored while they performed stressful tasks to learn how foodstuffs such as wine, polyphenols and chocolate affect cerebral blood flow; the ‘Race and Pace’ simulator, which allowed users to race on a cycling ergo-meter which show their progress via an on-screen avatar; and the ‘Jump to Win’ stand, which challenged users to see how high they could jump using a specially designed jump pad.

Senior Lecturer in Biomechanics commented on the event “The Newcastle Science Festival 2010 gave us a fantastic opportunity to showcase what we do in sport and exercise sciences to the general public. The interest shown in our exhibits by visitors was incredible and many were amazed at the ways in which we are able to use state of the art technology to accurately assess human movement and physical performance”.

For more information on studying at Northumbria’s School of Psychology and Sport’s Sciences visit www.northumbria.ac.uk/enquiries