Author: Sid Perkins / Source: Science News for Students
Medical lab equipment often showcases high-tech at its best. Devices can perform complicated tasks, such as separating blood into its parts, quickly and easily. But these machines often are difficult — even impossible — to use in poor countries or at remote field clinics. Often expensive and bulky, they tend to require training to use. And most are powered by electricity. But researchers have just unveiled a simple, low-cost human-powered device useful for medical diagnoses. It can separate blood into its different parts.
Best of all, it’s so simple a child could run it. Indeed, it is based on a toy that’s been around for thousands of years.
Manu Prakash is a bioengineer at Stanford University in California. There, he designs medical devices that can be used easily by anyone anywhere in the world. A few years back, his team invented a microscope made largely of paper that costs less than a dollar to make.
On a trip to the East African nation of Uganda, a few years ago, Prakash was surprised to see an expensive centrifuge being used as a doorstop. Medical labs use these devices to separate liquid mixtures, such as blood or muddy water, into their different components. Based on what they learn from those components, doctors will tailor a patient’s treatment.
But the clinic did not have electricity. So no one could use this machine.
The key part of a centrifuge is its rapidly rotating interior. Think of it as a small version of a top-loading washing machine. In a centrifuge, though, the interior chamber spins faster than the parts in a car’s engine. Anything inside a spinning centrifuge experiences a force that slings it away from the center of rotation and toward the device’s rim. This is similar to how wet clothes in the washer get squished against the inside wall of the drum during the spin cycle.
When a centrifuge spins a test tube of blood to separate out its various parts, the vial is loaded in with its base pointing outward. Rotation forces outward the densest parts of the blood — platelets and blood cells. Lighter parts, such as the fluid or plasma, stay on top. Doctors or lab technicians can then separate each layer for tests that guide treatment. Without a centrifuge, such tests become difficult, if not impossible.
The centrifuge that had become an expensive doorstop inspired Prakash’s team to invent something that could serve the same purpose. Their device would have to spin very quickly. It would have to be cheap to make and easy to use. And it would have to run without electricity.
Previously, Prakash notes, people had suggested employing kitchen devices as a low-cost centrifuge, such as an egg beater or handheld mixer. But these tools could…
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