Spira Day 12: Brains, Ice cream, & DNA!

Today was a very exciting day as we introduced the girls to Biomedical Engineering! We kicked off the morning with an introduction of biomedical engineering and lead that into a fun activity where the campers were able to extract DNA from strawberries and bananas! The activity was incredibly rewarding as the girls were able to extract and then study the DNA of everyday fruits! For the second half the day we gave a little chemistry lesson and allowed the girls to make ice cream right in the classroom! Each camper got a chance to stir the ice cream and ask questions about the chemistry behind it. For the rest of the afternoon we had a guest speaker talk to the girls over Skype about her work with Brain Gate, a computer-to-brain interface designed to help those dealing with paralysis and neurodegenerative diseases gain back the basic abilities they have lost. The discussion was incredibly interesting and peaked much interest in the campers as they were able to see more examples of how engineering is applied to real world problems!