Three high school engineering students have designed a hand brace that will allow a nine-year-old girl with cerebral palsy to play the viola. Julia Weeks, Hannah Kennedy and Antonio Carvalho from Concord High School in Wilmington, Delaware, in the USA, began designing the hand brace for Rayne Mason-Smith – who dreamt of playing in the Lancashire Elementary School orchestra – last year as part of a real-world project suggested by members of the public.

“I love music. I always wanted to play an instrument,” fourth grader Mason-Smith told Action News. However cerebral palsy made holding her viola’s bow challenging.

“She was having difficulty grabbing the bow,” Carvalho told WDEL in an interview last year. He said he also hoped being able to play the viola would help Mason-Smith fit in more at her school. “It just seemed really important to us that we could help her, and it just seemed like something easy we could accomplish.”

The trio of young inventors built prototypes – created using a stress ball, nuts, bolts, wood, metal, Velcro and duct tape – which they tested in trials with Mason-Smith in weekly sessions, refining their design. The refinements included a larger...