Giant Blood Drop
Part of Exhibition: It's a Nano World
Topic: Life Sciences Subtopic: Cells
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Case Study
of an Exhibit
by Kathy Krafft
Published on April 25, 2007, Modified on April 26, 2007
Museum: Sciencenter Focus: Science
Collaborating Organization(s): Cornell University- Nanobiotechnology Center, Painted Universe
People who worked on this: Catherine McCarthy, Tom Rockwell
My role: Part of the team that developed the exhibition.
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Description and goals
Young visitors can jump into a pit with thousands of small red plastic balls. The size of the pit represents a drop of blood and each red ball represents a red blood cell. A small number of white fluffy balls represent white blood cells.
This is part of a 3,000sqft exhibition on cells and magnification. Our target audience was 5-8 year olds, so that means kids who can’t necessarily read.. and certainly dont’ know about scale or cells.
By itself you might wonder if anyone really learns anything, but indeed in the context of all the other magnification activities and cell sorter, kids DO grasp the concept that there are amazing things inside their bodies that are too small to see.
Exhibit Opened: 2000
Location: Ithaca, NY, United States
Estimated Cost: $10,000 to $50,000 (US)
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Website(s): http://www.itsananoworld.org
Latest comments (1)
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love the prop
by Kathleen McLean - 04/25/2007
Kathy, I really like the look and feel of the first image—the “prop” that has red balls attached to a piece of paper. I wish more of our exhibits could look and feel like this one. K
