Today Avicenna’s members of the AASCC took a field trip to Indiana University Northwest to explore the lab space and learn a little bit about embryonic development (amongst other things!) from Dr.Harold Olivey. The children were able to get a much closer look at chick embryos and were even able to see the still-beating heart inside of the chest of a four day old chick embryo. In addition, the kids took a tour of the biology department, learned a little bit about fruit flies , peeked into a green house, checked out some dessicated fungi and viewed some “glow in the dark” (marked) embryonic neurons under a microscope.
In addition, this week I’ve added four more people to the selection panel. This panel will be reading over all of AASCC’s proposals and selecting the top three to move on to the national panel in Washington, DC. Our current panel members come from: Kansas State University (food preservation specialist), Gannon University (plant specialist), Dalhousie University (“brine shrimp” specialist), Stanford University (butterfly specialist) and Northwest Indiana (cardiologist).
I will be sending out emails to AASCC’s Avicenna student parents to give them more information about the current status of their students’ proposals. There’s a lot to be done in the next couple of weeks and I know we’re all looking forward to the selection process.
The following photographs are from today’s field trip…
The blue “dot” of liquid on that parafilm square is the volume of liquid we’ll be allowed in our well.
This lucite block will serve as our wells for the ground controls for our experiment.
That lucite block is sitting next to an iPhone.
This is a view of the block from above. We will have one of these wells for our experiment in space.
AASCC's STS-135 Logo
Mashallah, the work is looking exciting to me. Congratulations to the students who are getting a rich experience in this science program, awesome and fun. Congratulations to the teachers and Ms. Arceo.
Seema Imam