As Shayna Mehta (12) steadied the softball bat in her hands, gripping intensely to prepare for the pitch, the grassy field that usually lay beneath her feet was nowhere to be found. Instead, the soft surface was replaced with two heavy metal force plates, collecting movement data for every shift of her body and each minuscule nuance of her practiced swing.

“The general goal of a softball swing is to get as much power and linear translation as possible, so you can hit the ball as far as you can,” Mehta said. “In order to do that, what you’re doing is rotating your body in a very specific way to maximize the vertical and horizontal forces.”

Biomechanics, the study of these particular motions using applied physics, is what Mehta and more than 40 other Westview students researched throughout the summer under the supervision of science teacher Dawn Hester and USC professor Jill McNitt-Gray. 

The project involved the creation of a museum installation focused on biomechanics with equipment provided by USC.  

“We are basically creating a library of movement by having the students film and study their own personal motions, like a softball swing using these very sensitive  force plates,” Hester said. “The data that was collected [was then] interpreted and analyzed through the students’ own complex calculations of how the force vectors are applied to accomplish the specific goal of the movement.” 

According to Hester, the display, once completed, will be placed in the California Science Center in 2025. 

“We wanted the students to [create the exhibit] in a format that was largely understandable to the target audience of middle-school students visiting the science center,” Hester said. “The exhibit was planned to be an interactive activity where young children could compare and contrast their athletic movements to the Westview students’ using a similar set up.”

Therefore, once the display was set up in the California Science Center, younger students would be able to stand on the force plates and get a breakdown of their movements. Provided as examples, the Westview students’ analyzed performances would serve as a point of comparison. According to Hester, the project also amounted to something much grander. 

“In the bigger picture, it was also to generate excitement for the upcoming 2028 LA Olympics, where the hope was to have professional athletes perform and have their motions analyzed in the very same way,” Hester said.  

Opportunity for participation in such a large-scale project was first offered to Hester through her previous studies at USC. 

“I did my graduate work at USC and was largely involved with the biomechanics research lab on campus,” Hester said. “Our objective was to understand the physics behind human movement and I worked with Olympic gymnasts. I collected data and studied their kinematics, kinetics, and electromyography during gymnastics movements in the lab. I kept working closely with [USC] even after I graduated and that’s how I became affiliated with professor McNitt-Gray. ” 

Professor Mcnitt-Gray has won multiple awards for engaging young students in science and engineering. Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise when she presented Hester with an exciting opportunity for collaboration  between Hester’s Westview students and the university’s biomechanics research. 

“She’s been like a mentor to me and was always inspiring me to encourage students, especially women, to go into STEM,” Hester said. “So when the chance came to combine our work together and include my students, I was very excited.” 

Hester said the project was open to anyone who was interested and willing to commit to meeting three times a week during the summer and several times during the school year until the project’s completion in 2025. She even extended the offer to middle school students. Mehta said Hester made it her goal to invite a very diverse group. 

“In terms of students, she really kept it open and she really wanted this to be a learning and growing experience,” Mehta said. “She invited people from SWE, [Society of Women Engineers], her AP Physics and Honors Principles of Engineering classes, and even incoming freshmen who had never met Mrs. Hester or set foot on campus.” 

Right from the beginning, the students had no time to waste. According to Kiana Lee (10), they were divided into multiple sectors, each group having to complete their tasks before the other could begin their work. 

“I was selected to direct the Ecosystems Designers and Learning Experience groups,” Lee said. “It was basically the starting point of the whole project [and] we designed and built an ecosystem to support athletics, with the central design feature being a torsion box and the force plates. This was where we would perform our movements.” 

There were difficulties with designing such an environment, Kiana said, describing how it needed to be adjustable to each movement. 

“USC provided us with two force plates to work with initially,” Lee said. “The problem was that these two plates weren’t big enough to support things like a running start or some other kind of jump, and [our sector] needed to  develop some sort of habitat to surround those force places and give us more space to work with. It also needed to sustain heavier weights. So, we built a large torsion system with a box outlining it, which was a wooden [surface] that could sustain and distribute weight evenly. It was also adaptable, meaning we could slightly change it to accommodate any particular movement.” 

After the environment and flooring were built, the students needed to film their movements through USC’s high speed camera, which was connected to a computer that gathered the force data on a graph. Mehta and Jiya Nayak (12) led the students through recording their motions in the Data Acquisition sector. 

“We set up the entire software and collection of all these different movements,” Mehta said. “There was a variety in them: I did my softball swing, Jiya did her axel jump in figure skating, Kiana did her running start in [the 100 meter sprint], and someone even did their march for marching band. The goal of gathering this data was to study the different forces and uncover how they accomplish the different focuses of each movement.” 

The next step was to put visual vector overlays on the students’ videos, which helped break down the small movements of each swing, jump, or sprint. Nayak explained how her axel jump was simplified through the vectors. 

“Our main goal was to just answer the question: How exactly are you moving your body to complete whatever sports movement?” Nayak said. “The vector overlay helped to clearly see how my jump was done, as it was basically just a stick figure over my actual body, with the center of mass labeled. You are able to see how I bring my arms in and bend my knee to create more force for me to spin 1.5 rotations in the air.” 

Hester also had the students film individual videos of themselves explaining the biomechanics behind each movement. 

“Mrs. Hester wanted us to talk a little bit about how the movement was personal to us, but also our perspective and thoughts on the physics behind it,” Nayak said. “We explained each of our movements in more detail. [We hoped that] these videos would help the people visiting the museum to understand the science behind it better.” 

Lee, Mehta, and Nayak said the project has been a great learning experience, not only in the field of science and specifically biomechanics, but also in the leadership, teamwork, and organizational skills they gained. Lee said it was the first time she really stepped up and took charge. 

“It came very naturally, because I just felt like I needed to really facilitate communication and conversation to get the project moving,” Lee said. “There were just so many groups doing different things that it was hard to keep track of what progres we had made. So, it was essential to make sure we all knew what was going on in all the separate rooms to help it all come together in the end.” 

According to Mehta, she said that Hester also played a big role in motivating the students to work harder, even under the constant pressure. 

“There was this constant kind of stress because we knew this project was so much bigger than ourselves,” Mehta said. “There wasn’t much instruction as well and everything felt so open-ended, so it was difficult to know exactly what to do at times. But Mrs. Hester was so motivated about the project that it was infectious. It was inspiring to watch her be so enthusiastic. She’s one of those role models and teachers that defines your high school experience.” 

Right now, the students have finished the more technical lab portion of the project, having collected all the necessary data. But, the Software Sector of the team is still working to synthesize all the information together into a comprehensive website. They also need to program the exhibit in a way that immediately analyzes the movements, so it can be effectively presented at the California Science Center in 2025. 

Hester said that watching the students grow and learn throughout the project has been one of the most memorable experiences in her teaching career. 

“At its core, this experience was to encourage these young people to participate in science,” Hester said. “Seeing them come in every day, help each other, [and] be so passionate about the work that they did was just so exciting. They made a lot of mistakes and had to redo a lot of things, but they never let the challenge stop them. You just can’t imagine that this is a group of high school students that accomplished what college students and engineers do and they did it too in such a short time. ”