Glitter, cords and a tin of beans: the hand a school club built, by Nadia Kerridge
An original contemporary newspaper article.
When Romilly Marsh was told she could choose any colour she liked for her new hand, she did not hesitate. ‘Purple,’ she said. ‘With glitter. And a unicorn.’
Six weeks later, a team of fourteen-year-olds from Goodall Brook Academy delivered exactly that: a purple, glitter-flecked, unicorn-decorated mechanical hand, built around parts made on the school’s 3D printer. Romilly, who is seven and was born without fingers on her left hand, put it on, flexed her wrist and picked up a plastic cup with that hand for the first time in her life. Then she burst into tears. So, it is fair to say, did most of the engineering club.
The project began almost by accident. Design and technology teacher Graham Oduya had been showing his after-school club a video about volunteers who print simple assistive hands for children. Ben Raistrick, one of the quieter members of the group, put his hand up. ‘My cousin goes to school with a girl who could use one of those,’ he said. ‘Could we make it?’
Mr Oduya admits his first instinct was to say no. ‘It felt too big,’ he says. ‘These are kids who were printing keyrings three months ago.’ Instead, he told them that if they wanted to do it, they would have to do it properly.
They did. The club met every lunchtime and twice after school each week. They measured Romilly’s hand with the help of her mother and an occupational therapist. They learned to adjust free, shared designs using computer software. They discovered that the hand works because of tension: when the wearer bends her wrist, nylon cords running through the fingers tighten, and the fingers close. They printed one prototype that was too small, one that was too stiff and one that snapped in half when Ben tested it on a tin of beans. The fourth worked.
‘Failing was actually the best bit,’ says Aisha Iqbal, fourteen, who designed the finger joints. ‘Every time something broke, we knew one more thing that didn’t work. It’s like science, but someone’s waiting for it.’
That sense of someone waiting changed everything, Mr Oduya says. Pupils who had never stayed after school stayed until the caretaker locked up. Two members have since chosen engineering placements for their work experience. One, who had been close to exclusion last year, now runs the club’s printer rota. ‘I’ve taught for twenty-two years,’ he says. ‘I have never seen a group of teenagers care this much about getting a measurement right.’
The hand cost £38 in materials. A commercial prosthetic can cost thousands. It is not a replacement for specialist clinical care, and the team are careful to say so; Romilly will outgrow it within a year. But the club already has a plan for that. They will print her a bigger one. And, they say, a spare in blue, in case she changes her mind.
For Romilly, the details are less important than the results. In the past fortnight, she has learned to hold a skipping rope, carry a lunch tray with both hands and give her older brother a proper high five. She has also, her mother reports, used it to steal biscuits.
‘It’s the best thing I’ve got,’ Romilly says, waving it at the camera. ‘And big kids made it.’
The Goodall Brook Academy engineering club’s project is described as inspiring. How does the writer try to show this?
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120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 2.1 Section A (30%) - Reading, covering 2.1.1 Two unseen non-fiction texts, 19th and 21st century. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.