CHOOSING SOME MEASUREMENTS

The week of April 17 to April 23 has been extremely stressful and busy, but has significantly marked many accomplishments in my ISM journey. The main accomplishments have been with my final product, which is now conducting an experiment to test many variables and measure energy loss of various aortic valves. The main accomplishments in this week was effectively researching some of the quantitative measures that I will be experimenting with Dr. Brinkman and Professor Tae-Youl Choi, beginning to write my research paper, buying the materials for the experiment, and acquiring aortic valves for the experimentation process. I have decided to measure the orifice areas of the valves, pressure of blood flow through the valve, simple mechanical energy through the valves and Bernoulli's Equation, which combines the pressure, gravitational, and kinetic energy through the valves. After discussing with Professor Choi, I will need to take some other factors into consideration as I begin the experimentation process. I also bought the piping system and various other supplies to create the experiment. Along with success, there have also been some setbacks. Since the experimentation aspect of my final product has been so time- consuming, I have decided that for my final product I will write a report on my results and develop that into a publication over the summer. Some of the questions that I have had this week is how am I doing to test all four variables with one experiment? How can I use ketchup to have the similar viscosity of blood to use for the experiment? How can I make my ISM speech more smooth and with better transitions? Along with the final product, I am also struggling with writing the speech for final presentation night. There is so much information to add, with my mentorship experiences and the progression of the final product. In the future, I would like to effectively write and present my final presentation night speech to my ISM class as well as progress with my final product. Lastly, I would also like to watch some more different unique surgeries to expand my knowledge of cardiothoracic surgery.