stanford

 

Inspired by a whirligig toy, Stanford bioengineers develop a 20-cent, hand-powered blood centrifuge

 

Stanford bioengineers have developed an ultra-low-cost, human-powered blood centrifuge. With rotational speeds of up to 125,000 revolutions per minute, the device separates blood plasma from red cells in 1.5 minutes, no electricity required.

As a child I made several of these toys, they're good fun. But, I didn't have the genus to make them into a tool. IMO it is as elegant as the space shuttle was an engineering feat.

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stanford+centrafuge

Ed, this philanthropic work is certainly a superb addition to field tools for, IMO, one of the biggest problems in developing nations, which is diagnosis of communicable disease. I love the cheap and easy solution. The problems I can see with the device are twofold. Firstly, what is the maximum acceptable fluid volume which can be centrifuged on one disc?. Also, there is the problem of stability as it spins and how samples can be attached to the disc. I suppose these are not insuperable problems and can be solved with a bit of trial and error. Great find!

This is the same category as https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/276738145/foldscope-the-origami-paper-microscope

 

The objective of these sorts of tools is to bring affordable diagnosis instruments to the third world.