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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."

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  1. Re:Nice work, but... by Reziac · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?