‘How does our knowledge of cell biology contribute to public health?’
Intro
Over the course of the last month- with a pause when we went to Oregon as a class -we have been learning about cell biology and our immune system in our science class. We have swabbed the school, created character cards for parts of our immune system, and created advertisements against Anti-vaxxer claims. I really enjoyed learning about all of the little things happening ours us, and I hope you will too.
Driving Question
‘How does our knowledge of cell biology contribute to public health?’ This was our driving question throughout our project. We answered this question slowly throughout the project, but I got the clearest answer while we learned about anti-vaxxers, and what they thought might happen if they got vaccinated. To many people, they would rather believe what they want than the knowledge of cell biology, which prevents it from contributing much to their lives. On the other hand our knowledge of cell biology has impacted many people so much, from life saving vaccines or other medicines and medicinal products. There are still people now, devoting their lives to learning more about cell biology, which will help it contribute to more lives in the near future.
Anti-vaxxer Advertisements
One of the things we worked on, one of my favourites was making advertisements that undermined and explained why you should/ should not not get vaccinated. I made three different pieces of a media campaign, all comparing a silly idea to another silly idea- not getting vaccinated. The first one used a quote of Donald Trump connecting vaccines to Autism, and then I compared the quote to one of him calling himself incomparably gorgeous… you see where I’m going? The second add compares marrying your cousin to not getting vaccines, you could do either… but you shouldn’t. The last- and my personal favorite was comparing the chances of an army of evil frogs taking over the world to the chances of getting Autism from a vaccine, neither of them are going to happen. I chose to format my ads this way, because I know that I personally pay more attention, and care more about anything if it sparks an emotion, in this case, amusement, or laughter.
Character Cards
During the early stages of this project, we got to make character cards of different parts of our immune system, all with a consistent theme connecting the drawing. I chose to make all of the cells different Clue characters, Madame white (white blood cell) Professor Plum (Macrophage) Madame Scarlet (T cell) Dame Peacock (B cell) and Colonel Mustard (Antibody). I drew them all in sketches pro, tracing the shapes of the immune system part that they represent, and then adding aspects on top that related to the character that they were also supposed to represent.
Swabbing the School!
The other thing that we did within this project was swabbing different parts of the school, transferring them to a petri dish and then observed them over the course of around two weeks. I chose to swab the girls and boys bathroom sink handle, door handle, and mirror. I guessed that the girls sink handle, and door handle would be cleaner, and the boys mirror would be cleaner. I was almost consistently wrong. I was incorrect for the mirror, the boys had larger more consistent bacteria and the girls had smaller less crowded clumps of bacteria. The boys and girls sink handle was pretty much the same, with tons of bacteria all over the petri dish, while the door had a consistent amount of spread out bacteria covering the petri dish. The bacteria had a range of colors in all of the petri dish, from red, to yellow, to blue to white, and even some green. This was honestly one of my least favourite of the assignments within this project, with less hands on work, and more observing and jotting down notes and pictures. I did enjoy seeing how bacteria could grow, even though it freaks me out to touch a door handed or a sink now…
Outro
This was my favourite science project I have done in a while, I really enjoyed making all of these ideas into more personalized, fun versions while still making them educational. Thanks for reading!