Date: Fri 06-Nov-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: MICHEL

Quick Words:

Hawley-anatomy-Dr-Feelgood

Full Text:

ADAM Opens Doors On The Amazing Human Body

(with photos)

BY MICHELE HOGAN

Everybody's different. Right?

Actually, that's not exactly true. According to "Dr G.I. Feelgood," Bill

Peters of Mobile Ed Productions, inside we are all the same.

With the help of Adam, an anatomically detailed automated mannequin, he showed

the children at Hawley School how alike we really are.

Children giggled when they saw Adam, a funny looking character dressed only in

his underwear, and watched eagerly as trap doors opened to show the parts

inside. Adam demonstrated four of the 12 systems that make our bodies

function.

For the nervous system, Adam showed how touching his left hand set off

reactions (lights) on the right side of his brain. Children wanted to know

what would happen if you touched his right hand.

"I need victims, assistants, I mean" quipped Dr Feelgood, to demonstrate how

messages travel from the hand to the brain. Hands and more hands went up, and

selected "nerve cells" stepped up to the front.

The boy playing the role of "the hand" squeezed the hand of the girl next to

him. She squeezed the hand of the next "nerve cell" until the message passed

through several children and finally reached "the brain," who jumped to show

he had received the message.

After the nervous system, Mr Bones, the skeleton, showed off another way that

everyone is the same. Dr Feelgood explained to the children that we would be

"loose like a rag doll or limp like a jellyfish" if we didn't have a skeleton.

He told the children that bones do more than hold us up. Bones also make two

million red blood cells every second.

In the muscular system, students learned that the six hundred muscles in our

bodies contract, or get shorter, when being used. The children thought it was

neat when Dr Feelgood opened a trap door in Adam's arm, showing the

musculature.

Dr Feelgood told the children that there is another type of muscle tissue,

called smooth muscles, that we don't even think about. He said we have those

muscles in our stomachs, but it's messy in there, maybe too messy for children

to see.

The children insisted that they wanted to see, and finally won. Dr Feelgood

opened Adam's front. After pointing out the esophagus and stomach, wiggly

intestines poured out into Dr Feelgood's arms. The kids agreed that it might

look yucky, but it was worth seeing.

For the circulatory system, Dr Feelgood told the children that their heart

pumps 1,800 gallons of blood everyday, and that if they laid out all the

arteries and veins inside a human body, they would stretch 60,000 miles.

As the 45-minute performance came to a close, Dr Feelgood told the children

how sad Adam was to say goodbye to them.

One boy called out, "Then let Adam stay with us!" But, Dr Feelgood said Adam

could not stay. He brought Adam close to the audience to say goodbye and Adam

squirted "tears" on everybody!

Last Wednesday's presentation, "Parts is Parts, All About Us," was sponsored

by the Hawley Cultural Arts Committee.