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."

Comments

Why only third world?

[PolyDwarf]

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 has been done cheaper, clearner and easyer

[Qbertino]

And earlier!

http://gizmodo.com/5063917/diy-egg-beater-centrifuge-can-save-lives

Re:Nice work, but...

[Reziac]

And there's an even simpler non-electrical centrifuge: a human spinning a bucket.

My veterinarian in Montana, being a livestock vet who had little use for expensive or breakable gadgets, simply packed the blood tube in towels in a bucket, tied a rope to the bucket handle, and sent whoever was handy out to the parking lot to whirl it around their head a few dozen times. Worked fine.