Capstone #4B: Site Visit

My site visit was at Mount Sinai Icahn school of medicine. For my site visit I toured the lab. Dr.Masilimani showed me almost everything, even though kids aren’t allowed in the lab. I saw lots of cool equipment. They had special instruments to get the right amount of blood and a machine that spins around 20,000 times in a minute! Some of the scientists taught me how they take a thousanth of a mili meter of blood. The scientists told me they do that with the blood because they don’t want to waste it when they could just use a little.

They had a walk through freezer that had big boxes of items.The items looked at least negative one hundred degrees.The lab also had regular freezers that were -80 degrees. They had vials that were in big pots of liquid nitrogen. When you took the top off the pot it steamed like crazy. When Dr.Masilimani showed me this, he made me stand back because the liquid nitrogen could splash, and give my skin frost bite. One doctor showed me what happened when you dropped a piece of dried ice in warm water. That same doctor dropped a rubber band in the dried ice and it wouldn’t stretch any more.

The lab had almost everything in it. They had special box’s where bacteria can’t grow and special box’s that they put chemicals in so you can’t breathe in the fumes. They had a machine that cost half a million dollars! I asked what it did, and Dr. Masilimani said that there were cameras inside and it detected the heat of the blood and some more. Some machines even connected! One example of machines they connected are, a grid that held vials of blood, that attached to a bionic arm, that lifted up the vials and put it into a scanner of some sort.  I took a picture of every machine, but Dr.Masilimani said I couldn’t broadcast anything we did. When we looked back he told me that he couldn’t show me the animal room (a room where they give the animal what someone would be allergic then take it’s blood) because I didn’t have a pass. But, overall It was a great visit.

One thought on “Capstone #4B: Site Visit”

  1. Wow! Sounds super cool! I know you can’t broadcast the pics of all the equipment, but how about posting a pic of the outside of the hospital?

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