Hawthorne High School’s Anatomy and Physiology classes were given the opportunity to visit Body Worlds, Pulse exhibit in New York City on March 14, 2014. The trip was funded by Passaic County Community STEM Program.
Body Worlds, Pulse is an exhibit of cadavers, emphasizing different types of bones, nerves, and tissues that are found in the body. To start off the exhibit, the staff gathered all of the students into one dark room As the doors in the room closed, a short animated clip played on a wall, explaining the human body. When the clip ended, one of the walls opened up, revealing the Body Worlds, Pulse exhibit.
Different views of the body were shown. Students were able to walk around the exhibit and were free to read the descriptions of each showcase. Students were engaged by seeing the exhibit that went hand-in-hand with what they had learned in Anatomy and Physiology class. One exhibit showed what a non-smoker’s organs would look like compared to the smoker’s organs over time. Another of the many showcases that caught the students’ eyes was the cadaver of a pregnant woman with a fetus inside of her. To go along with it, there was a time-lapse showcase of how a fetus grows during pregnancy. Another cadaver showed an anterior view of a man that was split into three different sections; in each section the students could see the parts of the body. Towards the end of the exhibit, the students were given a photo opportunity with a cadaver of a man riding a horse. During the bus ride back to HHS, students expressed how they enjoyed the exhibit and wished they could return in the future.