Donating Our Bodies to Science

Or at least small parts of our bodies.

We heard in a sermon once that the salt that tears have in them dries and crystallizes into the form of a cross.

So we made a pact as a family: the next time somebody cried,

we were allowed to capture those tears on a slide and take a look at them.

The problem with that was, that everytime someone cried, as soon as the slide came rushing over to their cheek, they began to laugh and all tear flow stopped. LOL

So, it was very hard to capture tears.

We decided today after one of my little guys was almost done shedding tears, that we would do our best to get his tear on the slide.

It was compromised during the capture, but we were able to get a teensy bit of it on there.

We didn't wait for it to dry.

We just looked at it right away.

After his heart was broken, he was willing to donate his last tear.

Tear on slide

Wet tear

Then it was onto other things.

What does blood look like?

Reluctantly, I was willing to donate.

"This won't hurt a bit Mom."

Blood on slide

O- Blood

 "What else can we look at?"

The children chanted.

Well it just so happened that my youngest was having a psoriasis breakout.

We gently removed a piece and took a look.

Gently sliding a piece of psoriasis out of his hair

Psoriasis chunks on slide.  We weren't sure if we were going to be able to see them because of their thickness.

He had the honor of looking at it first, since it was his donation.

Psoriasis

Another shot of it (without the flash)

My oldest cheered, "I have a bit of skin that is coming off my finger.  Let's look at that!"

So we did. =)

Pretending that it hurts bad

My daughter also donated a hangnail.

What the skin looked like magnified at 400X.  It's blurry on the edges because it wasn't laying flat.

My daughter wanting to get in on the action donated her locks.

And I did too.  That way we could compare the look of curly hair with straight hair.

Don't worry, I actually didn't cut all that, just one strand.

The curly hair was flat looking.

The straight hair had more of a rounded edge.

DISCLAIMER:

No one was injured in today's science experiments.

All looks of terror were just the great acting abilities of me and my kiddos. :)

We LOVE our microscope.  So much fun!!

(Click on the pic below for link to Sonlight's Microscope website.)