Skip to main content

Science Lab

Ben's Science Class

Written by Ben
Illustrated by Ben
Experienced by Ben
Forced to be written by Amy



My science class has been veeeerrrrryy interesting this year, and I've only gone to four classes...

My science teacher (Miss Spencer) is like Miss Frizzle minus the magic school bus! Her house is practically a scientist's storeroom! She has everything from horse bones to aquariums to live animals.

I already wrote about the first week. On the second week, we brought in live toads, and we pithed them. For those of you who don't know, pithing is severing the spinal column and scrambling the brain so that the toad doesn't feel pain and can't move. Since they were pithed, we could dissect them without having to kill them first, meaning we could see the heart beating and all the organs doing their jobs. We cut up the toad, dug through all the internal organs, and examined everything. We also stuck a straw down it's throat and blew into it to watch the lungs inflate (don't worry, they didn't pop). I wonder what the toad was thinking....

The next week was even more gross, our dissection subjects were a rat, a fetal pig, and a fetal calf. I was assigned to dissect the calf (the biggest of the animals) and look through its body. The liver was hard to find because cows have four stomachs, which get in the way, but you knew that right? The pig wasn't too special, but the girls dissecting the rat had a surprise... it was pregnant! Miss Spencer exclaimed with delight, "This is the first time in 25 years that we've had a pregnant rat! I'm so exited!" The babies were very small, not much bigger than my fingernail, but there 10 of 'em, which explains why rats multiply so fast. Today there was no dissecting just studying bones. Horse bones to exact. She had almost an entire horse skeleton. Apparently some of the students from a different class found the bones in a swamp and brought them to her. It was cool - and next week we will be studying cats! Our teacher told us a story about how once, she needed cat skeletons for a class but the ones she ordered would not arrive in time. She was on her way to the class when, tadaa! Roadkill cat! She grabbed the stray cat, and threw it in the back of her truck, then she brought it to her class and they boiled it and got the bones... talk about a blessing from the Lord! That's all that happened so far but I will talk about more later (unless you were so disgusted you will never return to this blog of course :).

Comments

  1. www.cutoutdissection.com

    Watch the video.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Um, I'm guessing the toad wasn't thinking anything. Isn't that the point of scrambling the brains?

    :-P

    ReplyDelete
  3. I remember doing the frog thing in high school. My class was right before lunch. The only thing worse would have been to have science split by lunch, (Our high school has 3 lunch periods). Enjoy the fun. Tammy

    ReplyDelete
  4. WOW! what a great class! Sounds like you are having a great time! Nice post, Ben.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o

A Week After Surgery

Katie went back to the surgeon yesterday to have her foot checked.  It was the first time we saw the stitches.  When we saw her after surgery, her foot was already wrapped up in three inches of gauze and it's been wrapped like that ever since. The doctor decided that the sutures were not quite ready to be removed. There are stitches in the side of her foot where they inserted one of the screws.  The surgeon told us that she has to be very, very, very careful not to put her foot on the ground.  Any pressure at all could cause the screws to shift or break and that would be very, very, very bad. They knew we were going out of town for the wedding this weekend.  In order to protect her foot as much as possible, she was put in a hard cast.  It will come back off on Monday so they can check the sutures again.  This cast has a very limited time to be signed! Katie may not get to have a lot of people sign her cast  but she currently still has the initials of the sur