Archive for the ‘schools’ Category
Comic Book Super Heros: BioBus & Dr. Ben
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
National Geographic Weekend Radio on BioBus
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010The BioBus has been doing a lot of traveling over the last few months. We’ve been to Indianapolis, Illinois, Columbus, all over New Jersey, Connecticut, and we’re currently in Albany; all in addition to a packed schedule in the 5 boroughs of New York.
When we were at a public charter school in the Northeast section of Washington D.C., we were honored by a visit from Ben Shaw, a producer for National Geographic Weekend, a popular radio show hosted by Boyd Matson. It’s a pretty funny segment, and you can listen to it here:
National Geographic Weekend Segment on BioBus
Stay tuned for new and awesome videos of paint drying that we recorded yesterday at PS/IS 18 in Inwood.
Doc Ben
Frederick Douglas Academy III
Friday, December 12th, 2008The BioBus just finished an amazing week at FDA III in the Bronx. On the first day, we brought all of the 10th grade students through the bus. The rest of the week we brought interested students from the first day back to the bus for a day of lab work. In the lab work we had two major goals – first, to figure out the nature of the bright spots in the hoechst labeling (labels DNA) of our fixed cells, and second to identify and make movies of some locally collected cells. For now, I will post one image and one movie, but soon I will make a new page with all of the hypotheses and data that the students came up with over the week.
Hoechst (DNA, blue) and phalloidin (actin cytoskeleton, green). Sample prep by Tomas, microscopy by Wilson & analysis by Bo and Chris.
Dividing Bacteria from Crotona Park Pond. (Movie is in real time). Made by Princess and Taccara (P&T Productions).
Second Day at Leal
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
Protozoa, bacteria, and algae at ~400x magnification
The last group of students from Leal just left the bus and Ric and I starting to pack up. Over the last two days, 18 of 19 of the Leal classrooms came through for a total of more than 400 students. All sorts of exciting single and multi-cellular life forms showed themselves to us under the microscope, and we had a great time watching bacteria, protozoa and even some small animals swim, crawl and wriggle by. We learned that everything alive is made of cells and that bacteria are the smallest cells. Also, one of the fourth grade classes from yesterday came back through today for a look at fluorescent cytoskeletons and DNA on our fluorescence microscope.
Ric and I also got a chance to practice our spanish with some of the spanish language classes while looking at ”las cellulas del rio.” I still forget to roll my ‘r’ sometime, and Ric is definitely a better speaker than me! ‘El rio’ in question was The Boneyard, a creek (OK, not quite a river) that runs through the center of Urbana, only a few blocks from the school. I am very grateful to Yvonne and Spencer for all of their organizing work, as well as all the PTA and teachers for raising money for the visit.
Microscope Lab setup at Leal