Teach Engineering: High Arches, Low Arches

A main concern of shoe engineers is creating shoes that provide the right amount of arch support to prevent (or fix) common gait misalignments that lead to injury. During this activity, students look at their own footprints and determine whether they have either of the two most prominent gait misalignments: overpronation (collapsing arches) or supination (high arches). Knowing the shape of a person's foot, and their natural arch movement is necessary to design shoes to fix these gain alignments.