Our Body

Since Jake had Wednesday off of work, we took a mini family trip to check out the Our Body the Universe Within show. I had read and heard about this show last year and when I saw it was at a museum not too far from home, I wanted to check it out.

It was fantastic! The exhibit consists of actual human bodies and body parts which have been preserved with a technique called, "plastination". This process replaces the body’s water and fat with reactive plastics. According to their website:

The process leaves even the finest, most delicate tissue structures virtually intact, down to the microscopic level, making the process invaluable for medical study. The organs are actually IDENTICAL to their pre-preservation state. The plastic is initially pliable, enabling the bodies to be placed in many different life-like positions, and then hardens after infusion. The specimens are completely dry and odorless.

You can see everything! I wish we could have taken photos, but picture taking was prohibited. If you visit the link at the top of this post, you can view some of the bodies we saw. In school you learn about human anatomy and the different body systems, but to see how they actually look and where they sit physically in the body like is amazing! One display showed slices of the human body from the front to back of a person as if the body were cut from top to bottom. You could see all the organs, tissue, and skin.

If this show makes it to your area, I recommend you check it out. (Tickets for adults were $20) A little warning: If you are planning on taking your children, be advised that many of the full bodies on display are male with their full anatomy available for view. Yes-there were a few slighty embarrassed parents whose pre-adolescent daughters noticed and pointed out the fact that the body "must be a boy".