An 11-year-old boy couldn't fulfill his dream of playing the guitar because he suffered a stroke at age 3.

Working in consultation with physical therapists, parents and the disabled themselves, the Duke seniors spent 10 to 30 hours a week through the fall 1999 semester to produce some novel devices while staying within their assigned budgets.

Under the guidance of therapists, they affixed the ball bearing assembly from a Lazy Susan table to a custom seat suitable for Moogie (who weighs only 8 pounds), adding safety straps, a back rest for extra support and a special disk at the base to control the seat's spin speed. They also designed a table that slides into the front of the seat, with velcro straps to hold Moogie's toys.

"He really hasn't had the ability to spin before, and kids love to spin," said Hultman. "In addition, his arm muscles will be strengthened by pushing himself in rotation."

Meanwhile, George Laverde's and Jason Bennett's task was to design a self-strumming instrument for the stroke-impaired 11-year-old, Brian, who "loves music and wants to play the guitar," Laverde reported.

Laverde and Bennett modified the foot pedal from a bass drum, which they linked by a bicycle cable to a striking rod that fits over the strings of a guitar. Brian can thus strum the guitar, despite his paralyzed right hand, by depressing the foot pedal to cause the cable to move the rod across the strings.

At the final class presentations, Laverde read a note from Brian's mother. "I hope having music as an outlet for his creative energies will boost his self-esteem," she wrote. "He's already talking about playing in a talent show at school."

Another project, executed by Brian Pullin and Mark Palmeri, modified an already highly automated wheelchair used by Ryan, a victim of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. A 16-year-old student at Carolina Friends School in Durham, Ryan wanted an automatic desk that would move into place at the flip of a switch. So Pullin and Palmeri dreamed up a portable desk that can be safely rotated over Ryan's head for storage on the chair's back when not in use.

Two other ideas addressed problems that therapists had encountered when working with handicapped youngsters.

To aid children who have difficulty concentrating on important tasks, such as eating, Justin Wool and Michael McCarthy modified a large toy hook-and-ladder truck to make a highly visible clock. A therapist can adjust the time it takes a climbing fireman to reach the top of a 4-foot ladder, depending on how long the child needs to work on a particular task. When the fireman reaches the top, lights blink and music plays as the fireman descends again.

And to help children with coordination problems caused by head injuries develop muscle control, Peter Wang and Samuel Kuo built a device that encourages the youngsters to point a laser at a target box. Whenever they succeed, a special Fresnel lens on the box focuses the laser beam onto light-responsive circuitry that activates a pre-recorded message from their teacher.

Laurence Bohs, the Duke assistant research professor of biomedical engineering who started the class in 1996, said three of this year's ideas were suggested by therapists at the Duke Medical Center.

Other suggestions came from the outside community. The spinner for Moogie, for example, grew out of the needs of a therapist at a preschool center in Durham. And the guitar strummer proposal originated with Brian's mother, who had heard about the Duke course via a TV news clip highlighting last year's projects.

Projects from past years have included a sliding seat that allowed a 10-year-old cerebral palsy victim to act as goalie in neighborhood street hockey games, a hammer-activated bass guitar that gave new lease on performing to a musician paralyzed in a swimming accident, and a special head-activated throttle that permitted a 5-year-old without the ability to use foot pedals to drive a pint-sized beach buggy.

The Devices for the Disabled class is an outgrowth of a senior independent study project that Bohs introduced to Duke's engineering school. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the program has expanded into two laboratories, one geared toward electronic and the other toward mechanical design.