Blue Blood For A Science Project

[ojomikse]

My son is planning a science project about red and blue blood. Where can he find blue blood or how can he make it from red blood?

Thank you

[JackBean]

What's the purpose of such project if he doesn't even know, where to get it?

[ojomikse]

7th grade. He wants to add O2 to blue blood to make it red.

[JackBean]

OK, that the problem. Neither you, nor your son knows there is nothing as blue blood. Not very good start for a scientific project. So, unless you find some princess or snail, you will not get blue blood (unless you drop ink into it;).

[aloksarak]

Bluish blood found in Horse Shoe Crab, Limulus polyphemus or Atlantic horseshoe crab

[ojomikse]

Here is a website on blue blood from the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/23056/router.asp

On the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin website they explain how blue blood and purple blood and red blood all work together during Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA).

My son would like to conduct some experimentation with blue blood and purple blood and red blood and show how it mixes with O2 to change colors, similar to how it is explained on the Wisconsin hospital website.

[JackBean]

That is only picture!!! It could be pictured in blue, yellow and together green. But that doesn't mean that human blood is ever blue!

[ojomikse]

Are you sure there is no blue blood?

A Dentist friend of mine told me that blood is blue a few days ago. She said that blood is blue until hit touches oxygen, then it immediately turns red, so quickly that we can't even see it while it's blue.

She is one of the head Dental Professors at a large university here in our city, I think she knows what she is talking about. She has been teaching Dentistry for a long time.

[JackBean]

Than ask her what pigment makes the blue color.

Here you have five pages of discussion about763.html

[ojomikse]

I read your recommended link on Blue Blood. And I found more Blue Blood information around the internet.

Very interesting. That will change my son's science project!

Do most doctors believe in Blue Blood?

[JackBean]

I hope not. Hopefully at least not outside USA. In USA you believe in lots of crap.

[biohazard]

The effect of oxygen on blood is easy to check with modern evacuated blood collection tubes: simply draw a sample of venous blood (low on oxygen, deep red) and open the cap of the tube to see if exposure to oxygen changes it. And for comparison, mistakenly hit an artery when taking the sample to see what oxygenated blood looks like! You'll notice that the arterial blood is brighter red than the venous blood, but both of them are unmistakably red, not blue.

If that does not convince you, go to your nearest hospital and take a look when they draw an anaerobic blood culture sample. The sample is taken into a vial that contains no oxygen (oxygen is toxic to anaerobic bacteria that they look from the sample). The blood is red also in the anaerobic vial.

The person who decided 100 years or so ago to start depicting venous blood with blue color in all the anatomical drawings describing the circulatory system must have never guessed how much confusion it ends up causing in the USA :P