Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) questions.

[Pirateyoshi]

I suppose some background information would not be too bad, as it kind of sets the silly mood of the question, while still trying to fuse Biology with Engineering. I was sort of bored in my Health class and got to doodling on my paper. I drew something I sort of enjoyed. Pregnancy Toast.

What I imagined is a woman taking a home pregnancy test and rigging it to the toaster (which makes one + shaped mark on a slice of bread, and one - shaped mark on the other), then depending on the results, the circuit board in the toaster would shut off one of the grates, thus making the toast with your result on it.

I showed it to my beloved, insane Physics teacher, and he was sure that we could somehow make it work. Sadly, we lack the heavy background in Biology to really understand how these Pregnancy Tests check the concentration of hCG in the urine, and it has stopped our little project short. If we knew how it worked, we could rig something else to it to collect the data and program a trigger for it, or even make a makeshift test altogether.

So I suppose my questions are:

1: How exactly do these tests find out the concentration levels of hCG?
2: Is hCG in fact the only thing it tests?
3: What chemicals does the test use to produce the marks on the strip?

I looked these up with no avail- I suppose companies rather keep these things to themselves. I would gladly accept any help on this matter, as I would not want such a silly project to go to waste. ;[

[canalon]

many answers there:
http://www.ovulation-calculator.com/tes ... -tests.htm

[Pirateyoshi]

Hm, that page went more into the process of how it is tested than most other pregnancy test based sites.

So they use an antibody to form a complex with the reagent. Cool. The 20 mlU/ml finally gives me a quanitative detail to work with as well. A good push in the right direction I suppose.

[canalon]

Good luck to you to couple a test with a toaster though. I would probably use a commercial test, couple it with some sort of reader and link that to the toaster rather than trying to recreate the pregnancy test from scratch. Plus disposable toaster, what a waste