CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Earlier this year, groups of elementary students and middle schoolers came together for the 2024 S.T.E.M Exhibit held at Austin Peay State University. This included a group of students at Kirkwood Middle who transformed the life of Cruella, the three-legged bearded dragon, for the better.
“Cruella is a rescue bearded dragon, I got her at an Exotic Pet Expo in Nashville,” said Aiden Pilarowski, who is now an eighth grader at KMS. “And the backstory of how she lost her leg … there was this guy who thought he was a breeder, and he threw about 20 bearded dragons in a cage together. Well, bearded dragons are very territorial to what’s theirs, so they began to eat each other. One of the bearded dragons ended up eating the top of her (Cruella’s) hand off, so they decided to amputate the hand off and it went all the way up to her elbow.”
When 7th grade science teacher James Dockins came to Aiden to see if she wanted to join his S.T.E.M Exhibit team with an emphasis on prosthetics, she jumped at the opportunity.
“He told me the theme was prosthetics, and I was like, ‘That’s great, because I have this bearded dragon who is missing a limb from the elbow down,'” Aiden said. “That’s when I asked if we can bring her in and try to make a prosthetic for her as part of our project.”
“With being a teacher, a lot of times you’re trying to think about how can we do this real-world,” Dockins told Clarksville Now. “So, when she told me it was literally missing a piece of its arm, it was ideal.”
How they did it
After the administration at Kirkwood Middle signed off on the project, Dockins’ S.T.E.M Exhibit team jumped into action and began researching prosthetics.
“What we started with was research about prosthetics,” Dockins said. “With us living in a military town … the Army especially, through their research, have run away with prosthetics at this point because there is such a need for them. … We then started asking how in the world do we build a prosthetic that is actually going to fit Cruella?”
Dockins said to build a prosthetic that actually fit Cruella, they began a two-step process. The first step was to design ideas based around how bearded dragons stand. The next step was for the class to figure out how to measure the arm where the prosthetic would be placed.
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After finishing the design phase, the team went to Kirkwood Middle S.T.E.M teacher Brian Zacharias for some guidance.
“I have never tried to do anything like this before,” Zacharias told Clarksville Now. “From my end, I had to learn how a bearded dragon stands and that sort of thing. What I ended up doing was I found a pre-created 3-D model of a bearded dragon and enlarged it, so it was roughly the same size as Cruella. Then, we got the dimensions for the barrel, the inner diameter and outer diameter, and we threw it on there.”
Since Cruella couldn’t be test fitted in his classroom for hours on end, Zacharias printed out a couple of different sizes.
Cruella walks and waves
Once their final product was printed out, Aiden and the other team members had Cruella try on each prosthetic limb to see which would be the best fit. Once they found the perfect match, with the prosthetic limb on, Cruella wasted no time and walked around and waved to those around her.
“My mom says she takes after me with her attitude,” Aiden said. “But she’s always very calm, she’ll look at you, she’ll respond to you … cause bearded dragons wave if you didn’t know that. So, they’ll put one hand down and stick the front one up, and she (Cruella) actually did wave with the prosthetic on. … It made me so happy to see that she looked happier.”
The Kirkwood team then showcased their research and creation at the 2024 S.T.E.M Exhibit held at APSU.
It didn’t win first-place, but Dockins said his team exceeded expectations and learned so much.
“I would say the most remarkable thing about this one is having the real-world situation, because I think what it did was motivate the students to go above and beyond,” Dockins said. “When it becomes real, you can see that every student is dedicated to making this as good as they could possibly make it. … Then for her to stand up and walk around on the table, that’s when you could see every kid that was involved in this project so motivated that they could make this leg for Cruella.”
For this year’s S.T.E.M Exhibit, Dockins and his team plan to take their creation one step further by introducing a prosthetic limb that can bend.
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