This cheap toy can do blood tests just like expensive machines

Centrifuges, including a high-speed motor, are an extremely important device for medical testing. It uses centrifugal force to separate the liquid into separate parts, such as separating plasma and pathogenic virus from the blood sample.

However, a centrifuge costs thousands of dollars and it requires new power to run. That's not the conditions you easily find in a rural clinic, in a remote area in underdeveloped countries.

What is the solution to this problem? Researchers have tried enough ways to make battery-operated centrifuges, then run them by hand, but each has its own limitations. Until, a group of researchers from Stanford University could create a hand-drawn centrifuge , for only 20 cents (less than 5,000 VND).

Another surprise is that it is based on the principle of a very familiar toy: the spinners, also known as poker games that everyone used to play when they were young.

This toy must be no stranger to each child's childhood.

The wire turns from 3,300 BC. It is made very simply: from a circular disc object, chisel two symmetrical holes around the center and through a wire loop. By twisting the wire a few times and then deftly dragging and dropping, you can make the disc spin with amazing speed.

"That's exactly what you did when you were a child , " Saad Bhamla said, one of the authors of the centrifugal device he named Paperfuge. Back in his childhood, Bhamla was also a child who was fascinated with the twists.

"This is a toy I used to play when I was a kid," he said. "The only thing I didn't know was, how fast the dial was. So, I was very curious and set up a measurement with a high-speed camera. The result was something I couldn't believe. my eyes ".

A toy spinner can reach speeds of 10,000 to 15,000 revolutions per minute (RPM), reaching the speed of a modern centrifuge. Bhamla then joined his team to study the mechanisms of these spinning machines.

Why can it reach a speed of 15,000 RPM, while the hand pulls only a few dozen centimeters apart? Turns out, the gyroscope possesses an excellent drive mechanism, which effectively turns straight motion into rotary motion.

Super cheap centrifuges developed by Stanford researchers.

To see if a gyroscope like this can replace centrifugal cameras in liquid analysis tasks, Bhamla and his team researched to improve it. He built a paper with a small groove and put a tube of blood in it. Bhamla also added two handles on the wire ring to pull it more efficiently.

Result? This rudimentary device called Paperfuge costs less than 5,000 VND, but it has successfully performed the task of a centrifuge costing thousands of times. The improved spinning wire can reach a speed of 125,000 RPM, producing a centrifugal force of 30,000G (G is equivalent to the Earth's gravitational acceleration).

Just be rotated within 90 seconds, Paperfuge can separate plasma from the blood. After 15 minutes, it may even isolate the malaria parasite, if there is an appearance in the blood sample.

Paperfuge units can serve effectively in laboratories that lack conditions.

One of the co-inventors invented Paperfuge as Manu Prakash. He has been known to be a pioneer in the field of cheap biomedical devices. In 2014, Prakash created a microscope in the form of paper folded at a cost of only half a dollar. Like the Paperfuge centrifuge, microscopy is also one of the important tools for diagnosing malaria.

Currently, Prakash and Bhamla's team has just returned from a field trip to Madagascar. They brought Paperfuge devices and carried out tests for local people.

If you go through the upcoming clinical trials, surely Paperfuge will become a great test solution for clinics that lack conditions, in many difficult countries in the world. It is hard to imagine, a game that was born more than 5,000 years ago, now revived in such a great mission.