Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
BIOMECHANICS AS
AN INTERDISCIPLINE
1.0
INTRODUCTION
The biomechanics of human movement can be defined as the interdiscipline
that describes, analyzes, and assesses human movement. A wide variety of
physical movements are involved — everything from the gait of the physically
handicapped to the lifting of a load by a factory worker to the performance
of a superior athlete. The physical and biological principles that apply are the
same in all cases. What changes from case to case are the specific movement
tasks and the level of detail that is being asked about the performance of each
movement.
The list of professionals and semiprofessionals interested in applied aspects
of human movement is quite long: orthopedic surgeons, athletic coaches,
rehabilitation engineers, therapists, kinesiologists, prosthetists, psychiatrists,
orthotists, sports equipment designers, and so on. At the basic level, the name
given to the science dedicated to the broad area of human movement is kine-
siology. It is an emerging discipline blending aspects of psychology, motor
learning, and exercise physiology as well as biomechanics. Biomechanics, as
an outgrowth of both life and physical sciences, is built on the basic body of
knowledge of physics, chemistry, mathematics, physiology, and anatomy. It
is amazing to note that the first real “biomechanicians” date back to Leonardo
da Vinci, Galileo, Lagrange, Bernoulli, Euler, and Young. All these scientists
had primary interests in the application of mechanics to biological problems.
