Spare Part Surgery (SUR)

Many people use various spare parts in their bodies at some time in their lives. among the most common are artificial hip joints and lens implants. Nowadays many spare parts are made from polymers. Recently, artificial bone has been developed which uses a composite of polyethylene and the ceramic hydroxyapatite.

The photograph shows a sample of ultra-high molecular weight polyethlyene undergoing a tensile test to see whether it conforms to the specification for use in hip joints. Materials need to be tested in order to judge their suitability and the unit provides, among other things, opportunities to conduct materials tests.

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Many people use spectacles, contact lenses or lens implants to improve their vision. This chapter builds on earlier work on refraction and introduces work on thin lenses.

Ultrasound imaging is widely used in medical diagnosis. In this chapter, students extend their earlier work on waves to consider aspects of medical ultrasound.

The main physics content areas are:

Materials testing
Elastic modulus
Lenses
Ultrasound pulse-echo imaging