During the recent blizzard, I had a chance to explore the snow covered city. The artists of the Italian renaissance are often an inspiration to me; accordingly, I have a print of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man above my couch. On this snowy evening I was struck by the idea to reproduce the Vitruvian Man in the snow, through the traditional snow angel form, for this Biomechanics assignment.
The motion illustrated by da Vinci was in the coronal plane for the shoulder and hip joints (i.e. proximal). This reproduction in the snow has some limitations: the subject’s movement is limited by both the bulk of the winter wear and the mass of snow that is pushed between appendages with nowhere else to go. Inspection of the photos of the imprint showed a range of motion between 28 and 36 degrees. The visual measurement and rugged procedure can explain for the imprecise data.
Assignment: choose at least one joint and at least one plane of motion, and map the range of motion in some sort of digital or physical representation.
Snow angels? More like snow angles!
