Spinal Cord Redesign (11/7 - 11/10)

Image Source: https://goo.gl/m24s3G

Summary:

     The spinal cord is the organ in your nervous system that is made up of bundles of nerves. It connects with your brain and the rest of your body. The function of the spinal cord is to send information and instructions from the brain to the rest of your body and give information back to the brain. For example, if you wanted to move your hand, your brain will send a signal that goes through the spinal cord and to the hand telling it to move. If you get injured at a certain body part, say the hand, the hand will send a signal to the brain through the spine to tell the brain that it is injured. The spine is extremely important because it sends instructions and information to and from your brain and your body. Without the spinal cord you wouldn't be able to move or feel anything at all. 

SP6 - Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions:

     This week I constructed explanations about the spinal cord through my team's design brief. With my team, I explained the original function of the spinal cord, which was to send info and instructions to and from the brain and body. We then explained the issues with the spinal cord such as the durability of it and how it  couldn't heal the right way once broken. We designed a solution to the fact that the spinal cord isn't durable by saying that we could encase the spinal cord into something really durable and flexible such as carbyne. If the spinal cord wrapped in carbyne does manage to break itself  (which is very unlikely), there could be instructions in the DNA to tell the damaged nerves in the spinal cord what to and what not to do.

XCC - Structure and Function:

     In our redesign of the spine, the carbyne that supports the spinal cord in a few ways. As said before, carbyne is a very durable and flexible material to use. If it were to be encasing the spinal cord, the chances of the spinal cord breaking and the host being paralyzed is very unlikely. Also, since carbyne is very flexible, it acts as the original design of the spine and spinal cord. For example, in the original design, if you jump, the spine kind of coils to fit the structure if your body when you jump. Since carbyne is also flexible but stronger, it could do the same thing. So if you wrap carbine around the spine, the spine will have no problem adapting to it since it is now well protected and is now flexible so it could adapt to almost any position that the human gets in.