Remember that this post is produced by a guy that has collected product on a slaughter house "kill floor" so don't gross out on me. This is high level science!
A few weeks ago Janae mentioned that it would be interesting to have the kids dissect a cow's eye while they were off track. Well, I still have my HyClone contacts (not for the eye) and used them to reserve some body parts for a Tuesday morning. Prior to that we obtained a plastic table cloth, disposable gloves, and scalpels. Erik and I went to the packing plant. I knew we were in for an interesting time when the employee, blood streaked yellow apron and hard hat came walking into the office with a little plastic bag containing six cow eyes. I about lost Erik right there! I put them in our little cooler and headed home.
Once home I trimmed them up a bit and managed to poke me with a scalpel. Don't worry -- "just a flesh wound." The glove I was wearing kept the sample from getting contaminated with B+ human blood.
We assembled 9-10 eager science students -- OK, some were a bit nervous but they were still willing. One was allergic to latex and since that was the only type of gloves we had she was relieved to be an observer. I started off with going through the following visual to explain the wonderful things about the eye. I even got into rods and cones and color blindness, near and far sighted, etc. We then watched a YouTube video on the eye then it was to the table for the knife work.
I did think more than once about five teams of kids with scalpels but the two moms were still there when I passed out the gloves and scalpels so we moved right ahead. I did a demo with one of the eyes. Note that there is fluid between the cornea and the lens (green in the visual). I was tightly holding onto the back of the eye as I cut into the cornea. As I did, some fluid squirted out and onto the arm of an innocent girl sitting next to me. Yaaaaa! came the scream. I'm setting here laughing as I write this -- at least to me it was funny. Anyway, I got through all of the parts. I found the lens very interesting, quite hard yet it stretches as you focus from close to far away objects. What a marvelous creation. I was amazed how beautiful the inside of the eye socket is. It reminded me a abalone shell (see below).
Once we were done I noticed several lenses on the table not doing anything so I thought we could add some personality to the project and there they are smiling at you from the plate.
It was an interesting morning and the kids did learn something about the world around them. Thanks Janae for the idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment