Body Building Serves Science Students Well

They lounge around the classroom and lean against cupboards. Some actually hang from the ceiling.

They are the “trash bodies” completed by Thurston Middle School students this week, just in time for display at Thursday night’s open house.

“You walk into the lab and it’s like, ‘Aaaah!’ ” said science teacher Carrie Leventhal, making the sound of a stifled scream. “The night of the living dead.”

The 50 or so trash bodies now cluttering the science laboratory are the culmination of a seventh-grade anatomy and physiology project. Students were instructed to use trash and other odds and ends they could find around the house to build life-size forms, replicating the various systems found in the human body.

This is the fourth year the school has assigned the project, Leventhal said, and the students have clearly outdone themselves.

“There’s things like noodles in a Baggie for the brains, plastic milk bottles for the lungs and all different types of tubing for small intestines,” she said. “They take stockings and stuff them for different organs [and use] lots of sponges and balloons. It’s fascinating what they come up with.”

Students say they look forward to the project.

Tuesday afternoon, Ryan Allcorn showed off the plywood form that he and his partner Paul Brinkman created. Ryan’s father, an airline pilot, supplied some of the body part materials.

“I got the liver--or oil filter--[from him],” Ryan said. “I got this tube for the esophagus. I got the fuel pump for the heart.” In addition, the boys used a circuit board for the brain, plastic bottles stuffed with sponge for the lungs and narrow tubes filled with colored water for the circulatory system.

Elsewhere in the room, some bodies twinkled with Christmas tree lights depicting veins and arteries.

William Blodgett, who got an A+ on his project when he took the class last year, stopped by Tuesday to admire the work of this year’s seventh-graders and was generous with his praise.

“This year it seems better than last year,” William said, “a lot more effort put forth by people and a lot more creativity.”

The bodies were supposed to include the skeletal, muscular, digestive, respiratory, circulatory and nervous systems, Leventhal said. And students were instructed to work in groups of up to four people.

“All year long they’ve been studying the different systems, so this is, like, how are you going to represent each system using trash,” she said. “It’s very hands-on. They really learn a lot from it.”

The school is at 2100 Park Ave. Thursday’s open house begins at 7 p.m.