Students enrolled in the course AP Seminar have been hard at work researching topics and forming arguments, however they also get to participate in once in a lifetime opportunities through field trips.
On April 20, the students packed up after second period and headed over to Mercy College where they got to participate in dissections and discover new technology. The trip started off with dissecting a pig heart, a task some students may find disturbing, however these AP students found groundbreaking. The students suited up in their protective gear and dove right into the heart led by the Professor at the university, Dr. Ways.
“Dr. Ways was so nice and was a really good teacher,” sophomore Cassie Mccloskey said.
After the heart, the students moved over to something they never expected to see. They got to virtually dissect three humans on a new advice called the anatomage, an $80,000 piece of technology. The anatomage is a computer like table with a touch screen top that acted as a human dissection laboratory.
On the anatomage, laid three real life victims. The first two were people who donated their bodies to science, and the third was a criminal known as “Carl” who also donated his body to science after being placed on death row. The bodies were laser scanned to be placed into the system, where students could see every bone in the body as well as every single vein.
In order for the dissection to occur, the students used different materials and tools to break into the body. On the prisoner, they could even see where the needles were placed in his arms for his death sentence to be carried out.
“Dissecting the criminal on the anatomage was my favorite part,” sophomore Alex Livingston said. “That was a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
The students could not be more grateful for the excellent staff at Mercy for being so engaging and happy to help them learn. The leader of the class, science teacher Kathryn Nelson, touched on the subject as well. “It was a wonderful opportunity for the AP Seminar students to experience some cutting edge medical technology with the anatomage table and it virtual condavor,” she said.
-Emily Thielen
