(a) I, Eliora Smith, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours and 5 minutes ;) of work.
(b) My mentor, Ken Smith, helped me complete my Independent component.
(c) Here is my hours log; scroll to the bottom to find the independent component 1.
(d) My independent component was basically more mentor ship hours as I'm not allowed to actually work on anyone's prosthesis. If I was allowed to create a prosthesis for someone that would've been my independent component and it would've been really cool, but because of heath-code (obviously) I can't and it made me sad.
INTERPRETIVE
Basically any point in time where I get to shadow my mentor is always a learning experience as I'm either learning new things about the profession or making visual connections to my research. One of the most recent things that I got to see was an almost full hand amputee that needed a replacement hand covering. It was interesting for me because I got to see different ways of taking casts. Here are some pictures from the casting session I was allowed to sit in on.
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| First you mix this substance called alginate which is a fast drying mold mixture that is derived from algae. |
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| This is the mans hand inside the alginate mixture as it dries creating a mold of his remaining limb (ignore the radioactive box underneath, there was nothing in it, we just use it as a storage container) |
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| This is what dried alginate looks like. It looks wet still but trust me it wasn't. It felt like really malleable silicone. |
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| Here is the finished mold of the mans remaining limb, as you can see all of his fingers were missing except for his thumb which is what the really deep hole in the mold is. |
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| Here is the plaster mix that we pour into the hollow mold to create a negative cast of the mans limb. When finished it looks like the actual limb just white. |
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| These last 2 pictures are of the alginate molds after being filled with plaster. The metal pole he's holding is for casting after the negative mold is pulled out of the alginate, a clamp holds onto the pole while you work on the actual mold. |
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| Unfortunately for my mentor when the man had his hand inside the alginate he had it too high up and we didn't have enough space above his wrist joint to create a proper mold so my mentor had to make his own. He did this by taking plaster wrap and tripling it up to make it stand and then molded it to the alginate to simulate the rest of the wrist. |
APPLIED
My independent component was more mentor-ship hours and that allowed me to deepen my understanding of concepts and techniques in this field. The example above showed me that there isn't just one way of forming a mold because I've only ever seen plaster wrap or resin wrap used on whatever we are talking a mold of. This made me look at things outside of the box and realize that there isn't just one way of doing things in this profession.
