Salad Spinner Centrifuge: A Cheap, Ingenious Health Care Tool

Rice University undergraduates Lila Kerr and Lauren Theis were presented with an assignment in their Introduction to Bioengineering and World Health class. As Theis explains:

"We were essentially told we need to find a way to diagnose anemia without power, without it being very costly and with a portable device."

In a solution short on cost but long on ingenuity, the duo modified a basic, everyday salad spinner into an easy to use and transport centrifuge that successfully separates blood to allow diagnosis of anemia with no electricity. The device costs about $30, can process 30 individual 15 microliter blood samples at a time, and can separate blood into its component red cells and plasma in about 20 minutes.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/salad-spinner-centrifuge-a-cheap-ingenious-health-care-tool-2019637/

This is too cool.

I shared this with one of my colleagues who is teaching an engineering course next year. It sounded like a great project.

is absent. Thanks for linking.

I love things like this.

It's ok for some things, if you don't need too high speed.