Dundee Science Festival @ IMAR

For the third year the Institute of Motion Analysis & Research once again opened its doors to the public as part of the annual Dundee Science Festival on Saturday 9 November. The theme was ‘Exercise is Medicine’ promoting the benefits of exercise and activity to improve and maintain the quality of life and well-being for all ages. Initiated by IMAR in 2010 this is an area of Health Promotion now being strongly pursued by Tayside Health throughout both Primary and Acute Care sectors within Tayside. All five IMAR labs were set up with equipment providing demonstrations to visitors during the open door sessions. A new feature this year was the indoor climbing wall highlighting a new area of research being undertaken in the department by both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Popular demonstrations included the insole PEDAR and foot pressure EMED Pad and the live 3D upper arm VICON section; metabolic cart and pressure plate equipment in the Sports Lab. This encouraged a number of the visitors into having a go themselves.

The Foot and Gait Analysis Labs were setup to demonstrate various elements of sports, exercise and clinical analysis of a range of movements of the body. It had something to display for all ages attending. In particular the younger age groups enjoyed and expressed great interest in the practical demonstrations of the live motion of skeleton and stick figures involving their own body, whereas finding various parameters and cause of foot pain attracted great interest in the older age group. The results and abstract presentations displayed throughout the Institute from our varied and prodigious research projects by our students greatly impressed all our attendees. 

Comments from the audience included:

"Best kit I have ever seen"

"Highly informative"

“Very pleased we came and experienced the practical opportunities”

“I have learned a lot”