Twelve-year-old Jen Rustige admitted she was a little grossed
out when the lecturer started poking around in a human heart.
But, she said she thought she'd be ready to handle her own
hands-on dissection experiment later this year.
Jen and other 7th graders from Queen of All Saints School
in south St. Louis were among several hundred area school
kids at last month's "How the Body Works" session at Saint
Louis University.
The demonstration included views of actual human hearts
and other internal organs projected onto a 17-foot screen.
The kids wore 3-D glasses that made the images even more
life-like.
SLU's Adventures in Medicine and Science program gives
elementary, middle and high schools a chance for state-of-the-art
classes in anatomy, health and science education. That allows
even small schools to have top-notch experts teach anatomy
classes.
(l
to r) Clay Bruner, Jen Rustige and Eddie McInerney
|
For last month's session, Mr. Jay Nastav was the instructor.
He holds a master's degree in anatomy and is on his way
to becoming a medical doctor.
The "How the Body Works" class provides an overview of
how various systems within the human body work together.
The SLU program also offers more specialized classes on
the functioning of such individual organs such as the human
heart, brain, lungs and the skeletal system.
Mr. Ray Vollmer is the program coordinator for AIMS. He
said the classes are offered to kids on the SLU campus and
also as distance-learning experiences. In distance learning,
the lecturers are on campus but their messages are delivered
over closed-circuit TV to kids in their local schools.
He said AIMS will provide 150 classes during this school
year.
In addition to the 3D lectures in the AIMS' 400-seat auditorium,
the program also has a well-equipped laboratory classroom
where the kids can do individual computer-aided experiments.
This month, AIMS will offer a 3D class on The Human Ear,
Nose, Throat and Eyes on Monday, March 9.
(If your school might be interested in such science
classes, you can visit the program's website at http://aims.slu.edu.
Also, the St. Louis Cooperating School Districts organization
handles telecasts of AMI classes to area schools.)
Jen Rustige said the most interesting part of the 3-D
lecture to her was the comparison of a healthy heart with
diseased ones. Teacher Nastav had samples of both a healthy
heart along with ones that had been damaged by smoking and
disease.
One of Jen's classmates was 12-year-old Eddie McInerney.
He also thought the views of the human heart were the most
interesting parts of the 3-D lecture.
However, 12-year-old Clay Bruner said he thought the description
of how the human digestive system was connected all through
the body was the most interesting to him.
Mr. Nastav's lecture started with food being put into the
mouth. Then he followed the food all the way through the
digestive system. He also included information about how
the digested food nutrients travel in the blood throughout
the body.
In addition to the 17-foot images of the various body parts,
the lecturer also referred to another screen which showed
a drawing of the interior of the entire body. He would use
a light pointer to show where his various organs fit into
the overall body.
He said, "How the body works depends on how the body's
various systems work right down to the cell level."
The body works to convert food "into useful energy that
the cells can use," he said. He explained that the body's
metabolism is the system for converting the food into that
useful energy.
One of his demonstrations with the human heart involved
looking inside a heart where the person had had by-pass
surgery to improve the blood supply to the heart itself.
He turned the heart inside-out to show where new blood
vessels were attached to the walls of the heart. The kids
could see the stitch marks and Mr. Nastav said the "surgeon
had been a good seamstress."
Another demonstration was of a human brain. This brain
showed how one part had deteriorated when the person had
a stroke. The stroke had shut off blood supply to that part
and the cells in that part of the brain "died."
Queen of All Saints student Eddie McInerney said he'd already
done some dissection of a cow's heart.
Classmate Jen Rustige said later this semester their science
class will do some dissections of a chicken leg. That will
be during a study of bone structure and the muscles and
ligaments which hold the bones together.
Jen said she likes science as a class subject but likes
physical science subjects better. She said she likes studying
heat transfer and energy.
Eddie McInerney and Craig Bruner said they were more interested
in organic science.
Eddie said he thought the lecturer's manipulation of the
human heart and brain was "pretty cool." He said he's thinking
about being a lawyer or a doctor for his adult occupation.
Clay said he wants an occupation that involves "saving
lives." He said he likes lab science where he gets a chance
to do experiments and he may want to become a surgeon.
