Our Health Study at UCSD
On July 6, 2009, a group of 2 middle school kids and 3 high school students visited Dr. Trefts at the University of California: San Diego with the help of Lemar Slater as the head supervisor. The purpose of this visit was to gather information about general health to improve our knowledge and research on health are our communities. On day one the professor had a review test for us. It pertained questions about conversions and measurements that are taught in middle school and high school education. Dr. Trefts then went over basic science lab equipment, for example, a beaker, graduated cylinder, Erlenmeyer flask, pipette, etc. After the review, the high school students served as mentors to the middle school kids in a density experiment using graduated cylinders, pennies, water, and 311g balance. Knowing that density is equal to mass divided by volume, we were able to find the displacement and essentially finding the density of one penny to be equal to 7.5g/mL. The exploration of the mathematical aspect of science was deeply acknowledged the first day of our health study. On July 7, 2009, the second day at UCSD, Dr. Trefts gave us a reading from the San Diego Reader about PolyHeme which was a blood substitute that was being tested around poor communities. These people that were facing death had hope that PolyHeme would save them when conventional treatment wouldn't. This piece was important because it pertained to what our project at the Fab Lab. Later, we moved on to do an experiment on the spectrophotometer involving water and vitamin C. By using different concentrations of water, we recorded the absorbencies of vitamin C. After collecting our data, we continued to plot the points on a best-fit graph in order to see the data clearly. In a result, the graph was a linear line with no curves. Moving on, we used a mint liquid with a small concentration and found the absorbencies. The idea of this experiment was for us to experience true research that scientist produce. On July 8, 2009, the third day, we started of the day reviewing the funtions and the parts of the heart. We learned that there were four chambers in the heart, right & left ventricle and the right & left atrium. We were able to look at the heart models and discuss the way a drop of blood travels. If an artery had been clogged with fat from eating too much fatty food, then the blood would not be able to flow and it would make the heart pump faster, thus a heart attack. Also, high blood pressure is an affect of eating unhealthy and it can be controlled by medicine. After talking about the heart, we moved on to working with hands on activities like working with T83 Calculators and the LabPro Program connected to it. With this we measured the temperature of hot water to cold water and the calculator uploaded a graph of the change. Each one of us found the average of the temperature of the water and also the mean, median, mode and standard deviation. Next, we found out our heart rate with another device connected to the computer and our blood pressure. The average is usually 80/120 and if it goes significantly higher or lower, that is a problem. With new ideas in mind we have a better chance of informing regular people in the community about health facts they may not know.
