LUMBERTON — Students at Lumberton High School could be among the next generation of forensic scientists.
They had the opportunity to conduct experiments and examine evidence over the course of four days this week aboard a mobile laboratory owned by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Morehead Planetarium and Science Center.
Daniel Wheeler, an educator at Morehead, guided students through various activities along with Jeff Parrish, lab operations manager. Participants were given tasks similar to those that scientists work on every day.
“Each lab is related to something you would do every day in a science career,” Wheeler said. “If you were working in a forensics lab, you would be doing DNA fingerprinting. If you worked in a hospital, you would be doing blood typing, or genetic typing. We’re showing them that all the stuff they’re learning is relevant.”
A group of Biology students visited the lab on Thursday morning to take part in those activities. Presented with evidence from a simulated crime scene, they used a variety of tools to study DNA samples from two suspects. The students were given explanations of each part of the experiment, which ended with them determining which of the suspects was at the scene of the crime.
In another experiment, students analyzed hemoglobin samples to determine if a set of patients had sickle cell disease. Participants also had the opportunity to study blood types based on samples, a skill Wheeler said would be necessary in the professional world with critical tasks such as transfusions.
Another activity had students test fictional patients for HIV.
The bus that housed the lab, which had a capacity of 24 students, provided many of the resources that would be available in a traditional classroom.
“The whole inside has been converted into a science classroom,” Wheeler said. “We have supplies for doing all sorts of different labs.”
Morehead currently has two mobile labs traveling throughout the state to schools. Wheeler’s bus is scheduled to visit Lee County and Moore County in January. Approximately 70 schools are covered by the buses in a year.
“The department’s unofficial motto is Murphy to Manteo,” Wheeler said. “We really do go all over the state.”
More than a quarter million students in North Carolina have utilized the mobile labs, according to Morehead’s website.
While part of the goal of the program is to interest students in science, the ultimate objective is to give students new experiences.
“The overall value is a lot of schools in counties like Robeson, they just don’t have access to the resources that Morehead has access to,” Wheeler said. “Generally, teachers want to do hands-on activities, but they just don’t have access to the materials or the equipment. Morehead is able to provide that.”
That opportunity allowed the students to feel like they were career scientists.
“The safety glasses are just a precaution,” Wheeler said. “It’s rare that we actually work with something that’s truly dangerous, but it’s sort of a costume that they get to put on, the gloves and the aprons, so they feel like researchers.”
