The bulk of gadgetry has a deserved reputation for making everyday tasks absurdly simple. Remote controls save people the harmless chore of walking across a room. There should, in fact, be a couch potato award for the gadget introduced each year that saves humans from the least important or least difficult chore. Remotes are, essentially, switches that help us activate other switches. The level of uselessness to which a gadget will stoop is practically limitless.
And then there are gadgets that were essential from the start (mouse traps) or worked their way into our lives and have become essential. Does a phone or a computer count? It’s hard to operate in society without these gadgets.
A huge variety of training courses now rely on simulators, which can be high tech or low tech. Flight simulators saves billions of dollars, not to mention the lives of pilots training to operate larger than life aircraft. But simulators are also put to use for operating everything from motorcycles to air craft carriers. You don’t learn how to captain an oil tanker by simply, “taking the old baby out for a cruise.”
Here are some simulation trainers that you might not expect.
Medicine
Med students use oranges and grapefruit to simulate opening up a patient for surgery. They also use them for practicing suturing. You can suture all day without hearing the word ouch if you practice on a tangerine.
But medical simulators also reach well into high tech with simulators known as medical mannequins. These include the famous SimMan, made by Laerdal, which allows doctors in training to practice resuscitation, surgery and diagnostics.
Enter the computer chip and SimMan can complain of everything from a hurt knee to shortness of breath. In a current offering, the company is offering adult and children-sized arms with removable skin.
Simulators also put doctors and students in 3-D environments – a curtained room with life-like images of a car crash projected on them. As doctors go to work on the mannequin, the pressure is on. Simulators even put parents in a waiting room, where they can pace, cry, panic, scream or barge in on the operation, simulating real-life situations for doctors.
Flight
The most famous simulators are the flight simulators, which have appeared in countless movies, letting the audience know a potential flaw in a pilot’s skill or reassuring them that the pilot is prepared.
Simulators, such as those available at PilotMall, can put pilots in training through the paces, imitating everything from a sunny day to a typhoon. It can be a bumpy ride or smooth sailing and trainers can throw in surprises, as well.
Go to Battle
How many video games throw gamers into battle. It must be the majority of them do.
Are these really simulators? While parents are quick to scoff at games that mesmerize their children hour after hour, social scientists have discovered the long-term benefits of kids playing video games.
In a February edition of “Psychology Today,” Ph.D psychologist Romeo Vitelli noted that Dutch researchers claim that video games “not only … provide young people with compelling social, cognitive and emotional experiences. They also can potentially boost mental health and well-being.”
For many, this is not news. Games put kids through the paces in tough situations – exactly as a flight simulator does. And while they may not be teaching the correct feel you need to operate a throttle on a jetliner, they are thought to teach decision making and teamwork. Even now, as I type, one of my kids is handling the controls of a science-fiction battle, while the conversation with his brothers is nonstop as he listens to suggestions and other discoveries.
Big Bucks
Wall Street, it might be said, is one big, handy, public simulator. All you need to play is fake money. But after that, the sky is the limit.
Many high schools use play money or pretend credit to teach advanced math or investment skills in clubs that compete around the state. The local high school in my neighborhood won several state-wide awards by assigning each member $10,000 at the beginning of the school year and seeing how much that would earn if they actually invested that much in the real market.
As you can imagine, the kids simply wrote down their bets and followed the market – as opposed to using real money. But they did so well – they had a considerable streak of state titles – that I asked the club adviser why he didn’t take his own money and follow his student’s lead. He said, “well, they also lose an incredible amount of money from time to time,” a point well taken.
Computers
Needless to say, perhaps, but computers have opened up a universe of simulation. Programs can imitate just about any task imaginable. Heck, the game “Guitar Hero” simulates playing lead guitar for a famous rock and roll band and it doesn’t get any badder than that.
Featured image credit: Virtual reality concept/ShutterStock
