• Question: You say 'fun hands on experiments', what kind of experimets do you have in mind? Will students be able to chose a subject to base the experiments around, or will it be based on your work? (Although it does seem very interesting :D)

    Asked by *Izzy* to Carolyn on 17 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by EquiCH.
    • Photo: Carolyn Nielsen

      Carolyn Nielsen answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      I wrote a really long answer to this but it seems to have disappeared 🙁

      Try again!

      I study the immune system so I would love to have a hands-on practical to be able to do with students when I visits schools to talk about careers in science. One of the things I would like to be able to do is demonstrate how we separate blood samples (see pictures on my profile!) into the white blood cells (which are the ones I want to work with), red blood cells, and plasma. But I can’t actually take lots of tubes of blood into schools (!) so I am trying to think of a making a kit to demonstrate this… do you have any ideas? Or can you think of other things you might enjoy?

Comments

  • Photo: *Izzy*

    *Izzy* commented on :

    I think that all of my friends (and obviously me!) would enjoy something like that, however as you said it obviously wouldn’t be easy to take test tubes of blood into school 😀 would it be possible to create an interactive… app/game type of thing? Just an idea and then you could do a demonstration of course? Just an idea. possibly not the best one 😀

  • Photo: *zoemma*

    *zoemma* commented on :

    I would enjoy it 🙂

  • Photo: Richard

    Richard commented on :

    Hi Carolyn – just a thought. I saw something once to show blood separation where they had made a bottle of ‘giants blood’. Into a 2L drinks bottle they had made loads of red plasticine red blood cells and but them in the bottom, a layer of white plasticine balls for white cells, then topped it up with olive oil for plasma. Looked great and really got the message across!