Imagine a stretcher that can fold up to fit inside a backpack. It has counter-weights that act as a shock absorber to minimize the shifting of a patient's body when carried on rough terrain. And it is carried by harness, allowing rescue workers to use their hands to treat patients.
Seventeen-year-old Alexander Deardorff, along with 27 other classmates at Gann Academy did just that, and have the prototype to prove it.
Deardorff came up with the idea after attending a Civil Air Patrol ROTC program to learn how to rescue victims from remote situations last summer. After spending his days trying to walk on rocky roads and rough terrain while wheeling and holding stretchers by hand, Deardorff decided that something had to be done.
"I just thought, 'well, they have to have better stretchers available than this'," Deardorff said.
So Deardorff got together with Gann Academy's Science chairman, David Novick, and applied for and received a $5,000 grant.
During the past school year, Deardorff and Novick have been working on developing the stretcher twice a week as part of Gann's year-old GAINES program - a class that uses engineering and science to come up with new inventions.
The prototype of the stretcher is now on display at the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam's EurekaFest at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Engineering experts are examining the stretcher and 15 other inventions from schools across the country.
The stretcher is not the first clever idea to come out of Gann Academy's science department. Last year, the engineering club spent its Sunday afternoons in junior Benjamin Jaeger's basement inventing a machine to help people with a cognitive disability that hinders their ability to count.
After the club won 12th place at a national engineering competition in Washington, D.C., the school decided to start the GAINES program.
Gann Academy is a Jewish day school with a dual curriculum, meaning its students have to learn both secular and religious subjects, and go to school from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. According to Novick, the program's teacher, the program has greatly increased the student's inventing abilities because it gives them class time to do their work.
"We used to have to meet at 5, after school. It's difficult to keep them focused after the school day with all the many things that are eating at them," he said. "They're teenagers, and that was the major difficulty."
Along with creating the stretcher, half of the GAINES students also worked on creating competitive robots for a Boston University Engineering Design competition.
The robots must be able to drive down a track, place a hacky-sack in a hole, and knock other robots off the track.
Novick's students first participated in the Boston University competition three years ago, when they got 54th place, but this year Jaeger and his engineering partner Ethan Leeman took second place. As a reward, each student received a $2,500 per year scholarship to Boston University should they choose to attend.
"It was a really exciting," said Jaeger, a Needham resident. "There were a lot of close matches, and most of the schools had been doing this a lot longer than us, so we were the underdogs."
Next year the GAINES program will be limited to 20 students, but Deardorff said he hopes that they can continue inventing.
"Our design could work (in the real world)," he said. "There's definitely a possibility that any of the GAINES inventions could be used in the real world. As long as the school continues to support us, we can continue making new technology."
Novick said he believes the program will survive because it fits in with the Academy's motto of "Tikkun Olam," a Hebrew phrase that means community service.
"Our school is built on the ideals of helping others and reaching out to the community," Novick said. "And what our inventions prove, aside from the students' abilities, is that the GAINES program does just that."
