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Salad Spinner Made Into Life-Saving Centrifuge
lucidkoan writes "Two Rice University students have transformed a simple salad spinner into an electricity-free centrifuge that can be used to diagnose diseases on the cheap. Created by Lauren Theis and Lila Kerr, the ingenious DIY centrifuge is cobbled together using a salad spinner, some plastic lids, combs, yogurt containers, and a hot glue gun. The simple and easily-replicated design could be an invaluable tool for clinics in the developing world, enabling them to separate blood to detect diseases like anemia without electricity."
Irans elite military units placed orders for large quantities of salad spinners from walmart.com early Tuesday. UN officials release statement citing possible miscalculation of sanction effectiveness.
This seems like something actually interesting to read! Can we swap kdawson for samzenpus please.
Disagree != mod troll.
This is clever thinking on the part of the students, but hand-cranked centrifuges have been around for a long time. They're not terribly expensive, they're sturdy as hell, and they're durable and easy to sterilize -- which almost certainly cannot be said of something made of disposable plastics and hot glue.
Besides, if you're in a part of the developing world where you have surplus salad shooters and the electricity to power your hot glue gun -- which is, come to think of it, a good description of the eighth grade science classroom where I first encountered a manual centrifuge -- you can probably afford the manual centrifuge.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Something I never understood about the "This could be great for the third world" items..
Why wouldn't it be great for the first and second worlds too?
I would assume scale and speed aren't up to par with more focused medical devices... But, for the price of one of those, you can buy a bunch of 35 dollar ones.
This is really a great idea, bravo to the students. Though they use
to make hand crank centrifuges I'm pretty certain. This wouldn't
require being clamped to the lab bench or screwed down.
On the other hoof, were it not for salads and Vegetarians we
wouldn't have such a cool something to hack.
(subnote: could be other reasons a salad spinner was created.)
Davonshire.
It looks like this has already been done, and better.
There are interesting parts of this story, essentially the rest of the apparatus is hot melt glue, yogurt lids, etc. And it's interesting to make a medical device out of what most people would consider trash. But a Salad Spinner is a centrifuge, so I don't see why we'd focus on that.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
couldn't you tie a test-tube to a string and swing it around? SUPPER CHEAP!
What I took from the article was not that they re-invented the wheel, but where able to use analytical thinking and problem solving skills TO re-invent the wheel. They were able to think outside the box and develop a centrifuge (that works) from parts that you can find around a house. I think these students are creative - partner that with their education and it's amazing to think what they will be possible of doing or making in the future. Our future lie's in the hands of our youth - i feel good about our future with students like this.
Of all the things I've lost; I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain
And earlier!
http://gizmodo.com/5063917/diy-egg-beater-centrifuge-can-save-lives
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Tony Stark is trapped in his kitchen, and has a terrible disease, he needs a centrifuge but only has basic kitchen utensils, Will he survive?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
You know how when you use your hot-glue gun you leave the stick inside as well as the melted glue and next time you turn it on it melts?
Same would happen if you would try to autoclave/soak in boiling water something glued with hot glue.
The best part is that it probably would not fall right off - the bond would get weaker and weaker until on third or fourth use ampules of blood start flying across the room.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They were able to think outside the box
I think you mean, "They were able to think outside the salad spinner."
You extract a bunch of blood from a stranger in the 3rd world and swish it around in this salad thingy for 15 minutes ... so you can see if they might be HIV positive?
Where do I sign up?
What about duct tape and paper clips?
MacGyver would not approve without those items included.
It is a shame, a entire generation that would not recognize MacGyver if they met Richard Dean Anderson.
Fight Spammers!
Salad spinner being somewhat a "technology" that only "1st or 2nd worlder" will use I find it rather hard to comment on the fact that two girls have come up with a way to use a salad shooter as a centrifuge without coming off all chauvinistic.
You know... women... diet... salad...
Cause, there is a MUCH MORE readily available manually powered centrifuge that doesn't even need the hot glue gun to make it work.
Just some duct tape, as they are using very light and rather small capillary tubes. With proper use of pliers - not even duct tape.
A bicycle.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's a sales term. While it's in the box, it's a salad spinner, but once the box is opened and the product removed, who knows what the end user will do with it? That's "thinking outside the box."
Can you seriously imagine someone in the third world having a salad spinner?
I went to high school with Lauren and I go to Rice too, but I never knew this was going on. I guess keeping to the CS and English depts would do that. Still, cool stuff.
A centrifuge used as a centrifuge. What is newswothy here? The developing world does not need this incredible level of arrogance implied here either. Of course they know how to centrifuge things without electricity. They may not have technology, but intelligence is evenly distributed (or maybe even better there, given this drastic example that at least in some places of the western world, it is rather low.)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Is it powered by the "super battery" designed by Fred Edison?
If Rice University in China or Japan?
An egg-beater would be much more suitable for such a purpose.
Which is incidentally another kitchen utensil that could also be used as a manual centrifuge.
Though, some steps would have to be taken first so the samples for blood analysis don't end up in the same location as the coloring used for special effects.
Namely, all around the room.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This mite be usefull in the developing world... The problem I see is... where would you find a salad spinner in the developing world, on second thought why would anyone in the developing world even need a salad spinner, wait, why would ANYONE need a salad spinner? Since there are probably a lot of people like me that have no idea what a salad spinner is, here's a link i found http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-salad-spinner.htm
Don't know what to say...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
What was the name of the second student? The one that wasn't McGyver?
can it also be used to centrifuge Uranium?
Trouble with using a bike for this is that the tubes are filled with BLOOD, which could be infected, (which may be why, after all, you're spinning it, to diagnose,) and if you put it in a bike, and spin it, and get careless, BAM! BLOOD SPRAYING EVERYWHERE if one of the tubes breaks. Much less likely to break inside a salad spinner, and even if it does, it's at least mostly contained. Kind of embarrassed it took a couple Rice students to think this up, and not someone from UH... I'll have to fix that someday.