A children’s electrode set grabs second prize in a contest to build the next big science toy.
Robijanto Soetedjo can’t stop playing with electricity. At work, this neuroscientist at the University of Washington in Seattle studies the electrical properties of cells in our brains. At home, he has used his knowledge of electrophysiology to develop a new toy. This “Bioelectricity Toy Set,” allows kids to discover the electricity in their own bodies.
Soetedjo nabbed second place and $25,000 in the first annual Science, Play and Research Kit — or SPARK — contest. Sponsored by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Society for Science & the Public (this blog’s parent organization), the contest searched for next-generation “chemistry sets.” The goal: new types of toy to let kids develop their own experiments. But the contest’s organizers understand scientific inspiration comes from more than chemistry.
“I wanted to get the children to know how cool neuroscience is,” Soetedjo says. He observed most neuroscience demonstrations have kids looking at brains, not doing things with the nervous system. The best way to help kids discover neuroscience, he reasoned, would be electromyography. Also known as EMG, it uses electrodes on the skin to record the electrical activity of the muscles underneath.
