I'm
sprinting through the course. It's only Day 3, but I've already watched all the
modules for Weeks 1 and 2, taken all the pertinent quizzes, and finished the homework. I'll probably be slowing down, though, because by the end
of the Week 2 material, the problems were getting harder. Here's a passage we were asked to make shorter and clearer.
"The lower external joint moments at the knee and hip
joints, the lower mechanical work at the knee joint during stance, the lower
energy loss in the prosthetic ankle joint, and the lower total body mechanical
work in each ground contact leads to the assumption that running with dedicated
prostheses allows the double transtibial amputee sprinter to run at the same
level of performance as able-bodied controls, albeit, at lower metabolic
costs."
That's a 72-word sentence. It's not only opaque, it's built upside down. The point, buried at the end,
is that a person with both legs amputated below the knee, like Oscar Pistorius,
can with the right prostheses sprint as fast as a person with two intact legs,
and in fact, can do it using less energy. How do they do that? With all the
advantages created by their new blades, painstakingly enumerated in the first
half of the sentence, to a reader who doesn't yet know why he's being told all
this stuff.
My version, in only 49 words,
was this: "Even after double amputations below the knee, with the
right prostheses, a sprinter can run as fast as an able-bodied runner, and use
less energy doing so, because these prostheses offer lower moments at knee and
hip joints, less mechanical knee work, and less energy consumed by ground
contact."
The
course, after showing me a model answer but assuring me that I did not have to
have matched it exactly, asked if I thought my version had improved upon the
original. I said it had.
Two
ways this is different from my first time through college: I’m doing all my
homework, turning it in early, and then getting to grade my own quizzes. It’s a thrill.
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