A real-life (artificial-life) bionic man is coming to the New York Comic Con and Smithsonian Channel — and he’s inspiring a contest open to highschool students in Comcast and Cablevision Systems service areas.
As seen in the current Smithsonian Magazine, “The Incredible Bionic Man” is a 6-foottall robot built from bionic body parts and implantable synthetic organs, and complete with a functioning circulatory system. He is the result of billions of dollars of research and features components borrowed from some of the world’s leading laboratories, designed to show off how far science has come in efforts to simulate the human body. He’s chronicled in the Smithsonian Channel documentary of the same name on Oct. 20 and will appear at New York Comic Con at the Javits Center Oct. 10-13. The following week he will head to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., for a fall visit.
The channel’s affiliate team is running a science contest for students in grades 9-12, dubbed “The Incredible Bionic Man Challenge.” Students visit a co-branded website, watch The Incredible Bionic Man doc, create a bionic replacement part, then make an original video describing their work. Video entries are uploaded to the contest website to be reviewed by a judging panel.
Four finalists will be chosen from those entries, and (with a guest) will attend a grand-prize award ceremony at a Smithsonian Institution museum in Washington, D.C. One of them will win a $5,000 college scholarship. Support from the channel also includes educator curricular resources, such as lesson plans and background materials, and co-branded tune-in spots.
The contest runs between Oct. 1 and Nov. 7.
