Scientists have found the inspiration for a lifesaving tool in an unusual place — a children's toy. The invention may soon help health care workers diagnose malaria in places where standard laboratory equipment is hard to find. Diagnosing malaria in the field isn't all that difficult, but you need a device called a centrifuge that can spin a blood sample very quickly, causing different types of cells in blood to separate from each other.
Most centrifuges are bulky, require electricity and are expensive. Because of that, many field hospitals in developing nations don't have easy access to the technology.
Manu Prakash, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University who developed the new tool, saw the need firsthand during a trip to Uganda. "We were out in a primary health center talking to health care workers and we found a centrifuge used as a doorstop because there's no electricity." The workers said that they really needed a powerful centrifuge that they could use anywhere. And it needed to be cheap.
When he got back to California, Prakash began experimenting with all kinds of things that spin, including toys. Toys might seem like a strange place to start, but Prakash didn't think so. Who doesn't love toys? And, he explains, "Toys hide in them pretty profound physical phenomena that we just take for granted."
The researchers started to experiment with yo-yos. But the yo-yos didn't spin fast enough to work as a centrifuge. Then they stumbled upon the children's toy known as the whirligig, or buzzer.