Text and photos by Marilynn Young
Rubber dish gloves, old tennis balls, even the all-knowing Master Yoda found useful purpose as students at Thurston Middle School used their imaginations to gather recycled items from around the house to build a 3D construction of the human body.
Students wheeled their creations into science class in recent weeks to explain in detail the way each specific object on their “body” was chosen to symbolize different human organ systems and how they function.
“We used a music cd with heavy metal on it to show muscle” said Bailey Shoemaker, 13, and her team.
A small sink plunger was useful in showing how the body eliminates fluid with a packet of chamomile seeds placed underneath to represent the testes on the body built by the team of Carson Cushing, Anthony Digenova, Jordan Lippo and Zack Washer, all 13 year olds.
The human body project is a culmination of the semester’s curriculum that is also the subject of the final exam in Linda Hill-Lindsay’s seventh-grade science class on human anatomy.
Hill-Lindsay says that in previous years the bodies experienced
an after-life at the Laguna Art Museum as art installations and have been stationed on a floor of the former South Coast Medical Center to cheer up patients and visitors.
