You Can't Build a Better Tuna

RoboTuna

Here's the first short essay I wrote for the Science Writing program at MIT. As a warm-up exercise, we were tasked with observing an object at a local museum and writing 500-800 words on it.

Though over twenty years old, RoboTuna looks like a freshly caught fish partway through filleting.

Its fabric skin is pulled back to reveal slender plastic ribs and motor-guts near its head, but the layer of synthetic scales between ribs and skin still clings to its back half. A wire threads through each belt of long, thin scales, creating a series of overlapping scale-belts down its body. Six joints down its spine give it the potential to ripple like a tuna hurtling after prey. RoboTuna is ready to swim as smoothly as a real fish.